TAMPA, Fla. — Tampa Police want people living in the southeast Seminole Heights neighborhood to cooperate with officers and provide any information they have on the most recent shooting. Neighbors are also asked to pay close attention to what is happening along their streets.
The U.S. Postal Service is making some changes, instructing its workers to avoid areas where there is a police presence.
“Our priority is the safety and well-being of our employees,” said Debra J. Fetterly, USPS Spokesperson. “Our letter carriers make every effort to deliver their routes as long as it is safe. We are keeping a watchful eye on the situation and will continue to do so.”
Every day our government encourages people to be violent. After the murders in Las Vegas Senator John Thune told the American public that “Americans are just going to have to protect themselves” Now isn’t that his job? We pay taxes just to be told every man for themselves! When are the elected officials going to do what they were elected for? Seems strange that our government doesn’t have any restrictions on weapons, while they have placed restrictions on voting rights! Is this country America or is it Yemen?
Nice of management to be so concerned about the safety of its carriers. They don’t want to be sued, either. But one thing is kind of strange – wouldn’t a carrier feel a bit safer where there was a police presence? I know I delivered to some really terrible ratty gang infested apartments and duplexes on my last route for over 10 years, and it was pathetic to see a regular kid of eight or nine a few short years later prancing around like a gang banger because (I know this from the mail their parents received from the local police, country sheriff and lawyers, not to mention seeing their names nearly every day from some stop on my route in the crime report section of the paper) their parents were no damn good.
It still amazes me I wasn’t robbed at gunpoint before I retired.
However, I can see the management’s point – seeing police all over the place making busts all the time isn’t good, either. One city, I believe it was Chicago, had a route that delivered to a couple of south side projects that were so dangerous the carrier eventually refused to enter them. Management there at least backed the carrier up, suspended street delivery, and some residents there complained because they thought the carrier ought to have to take their chances like others who lived there. Wrong. These gang kids grow up unsupervised much of the time, see their parents and relatives doing drugs, assaulting each other, and being shit faced drunk all the time. What are they supposed to take away from all this? There are some good parents and guardians stuck because they are in poverty, and a few make it out to have actual decent lives, but they are few and far between.
To make a long story short, the USPS is not obligated to subject its employees to areas where the people themselves have made war zones out of their projects, apartment complexes, etc. In places especially violent, there should not be street service period. Getting free mail delivery is a service, and carriers have enough to deal with without worrying about making it out of bad sections of town alive. Those who made those neighborhoods death traps can only blame themselves.