7/9/17 – ROLLA, MO – A five hour stand-off has ended in Rolla, Missouri. The Rolla Police Department along with the Missouri State Highway Patrol had been in a stand-off with postal employee at the Rolla Post Office located on West 8th street. Around 6:30 pm officers entered the Post Office and found the gunman dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
The incident started around 1:30 pm Sunday afternoon when an armed postal employee took 3 co-workers hostages after finishing his delivery route.
Police had deployed a tactical unit and a negotiator to the scene.
The Chief of Police Sean Fagan told Fox 2 that the suspect has been called a very good employee by his supervisor, and had no known issues at work. The chief also said there is no known motive for taking his co-workers hostage or why he had a handgun. But during his conversations with the police he threatened to commit suicide. Fox 2 St. Louis
Dear Mr. D Trump President Obama had nothing to do with making Sunday a work day. Working Sunday started in the late 60’s. If you didn’t just watch the Fix network for news you would know that. So you think that president Dump is for the working man or woman. Just look at his bankruptcy’s. Other businessmen and workers had wages and benefits taken from them because of Mr. Dump when he took his many legal actions! As you are going down the drain you will wake up.
And what does this have to do with the article snowflake??
Never mind…feed should read top down!
I have learned from another post that this fellow was an RCA. Still, it shows us that steps need to be taken. CCA’s and RCA’s and anybody else subject to very long hours without decent downtime are overworked, exhausted, have next to no time for family, and many quit because the USPS abuses them not just with long hours, but like to bully them because union representation is weak at best, so those supervisors and other management creeps with sadistic streaks have been literal tyrants to these new workers. The NALC will be doing a one time CCA conversion to career status, but it isn’t nearly enough.
The NALC, like management, especially those at District levels and higher, are far removed from the workroom floor and its problems. Local NALC officials can be lazy and prefer to do nothing, or their NBA offices can be non-supportive, leaving the locals without the necessary back up to address the issues. This spells bad news for RCA’s and CCA’s.
I blame management for the abuse, and blame the unions for ineffective representation. Unions can talk the talk, but I know of many personally who never took the time to walk the walk, so to speak. The rank and file members of the various unions pay for their job representation and a sense of security, not to mention benefits. Management cannot be expected to do the right thing most of the time unless they are forced to in the higher offices, but they do pay people to work for them. But the employees PAY the unions, and far too often their leadership is all too happy to collect dues, but spend the rest of the time playing politics and sucking up to the largest branches and ignoring the ones who can’t make a difference in their own elections. People die, words get spewed, nothing changes. I’m glad I’m out, but I have friends still in the USPS and they deserve the best representation available, whether they are in a small office or a huge city.
To circus never ends, I looked him up and he is a rural carrier associate making $21.54 per hour. He obviously was making less than a regular but at least it wasn’t slave wages.
Ah. I was a city letter carrier my whole career so my habit is to start there. I forgot about the RCA’s. Thank you for looking that up. He was making more than the City Carrier Assistants (CCA’s) who also have to deliver amazon.com parcels on Sundays. Still a terrible thing to happen, and I have to wonder why more offices don’t have metal detectors. Rolla is a small town of about 17000 between Springfield and St. Louis, Mo. for those wondering where it is, so it’s a sure bet they didn’t have detectors. No offices in my area do, either, and my office is the largest single unit office in my state. Maybe it’s time we looked at this issue because it could have resulted in the deaths of the other employees held hostage, and frankly, I don’t know why outside implementing the Joint Statement on Violence in the Workplace management didn’t install metal detectors nationwide after the horrors of Edmond, Oklahoma and Royal Oak, Michigan.
We shouldn’t be alarmed by the supposed frequencies of such incidents, like the media likes to blow out of proportion. Yes, we have some bad things happen, but one has to remember the USPS is the nation’s largest employer, with around 800,000 people working for them. That is the size of Indianapolis, the Twin Cities, Austin, Texas and lots of other cities with large metro areas. So we know there are going to be employees dealing with any number of personal problems or abusive work atmospheres at any given moment.
I never thought the “going postal” gag was funny at all and wish it would stop. We just get more press, and it makes us all look bad.
Amazon is more important than people!! NO ONE SHOULD WORK DELIVERING ON SUNDAY PERIOD!! IT IS NOT A BUISNESS DAY.. IT IS A DAY FOR CHURCH AND FAMILY
THANKS OBAMA ….FOR MAKING SUNDAY JUST ANOTHER DAY!!!
lol PO made it a work day….PS: I’ve worked for the PO for 30 years, 20 of them over nights on SUNDAYS!
its only going to get better kiddies…….with postal mismanagement trying to get rid of 16,000 clerks. notice we have never had a reduction in force in the ranks of the low IQ, no college, postal bureaucrats. I bet they transport the dummies in to Elephant Plaza in a short yellow bus.
What a double tragedy. As a Postal Retiree it hurts more than explanation! Circus your views and perception along with the condolence are on point because we Stewards and Union Representatives better be ready for all cases, and potential cases. This proves what Circus alluded to. Extremely important what CCa’s endure for Steward appearance
Also Circus your words are great encouragement to anyone facing those life challenges as stated and more, please seek help. Anyone of our Co-Workers should have workplace support from the workers, for we’re the ones responsible to lookout for potentials without harming, but to assist, help, and alert.
Rarely, after a tragedy, anyone has no knowledge of potential danger from a co-worker. Often one person can share thoughts and views on possibilities.
We must remain vigilant!
Thanks, Ernest. I’m a retiree too, and represented my city carriers for 17 years. I did the best I could, but I ran into lots of problems at higher levels. We need our unions to back up the offices with a lot more energy and interest than they do now. After all, members pay for the representation, and without backup outside our local branches, it’s a useless fight. If your region or branch isn’t being fair to all, it’s time to send some people packing.
who delivers a route on sunday
Amazon parcel delivery 7 days a week.
This is only a symptom of a much greater problem of employee abuse, hostility in the workplace and incessant pressure on employees by uncaring and abusive management. I fully expect much more of these types of desperate actions by employees that have hit the breaking point!
This sounds like a CCA if he was delivering mail, not “male” as the captioning spelled it – inexcusable for a news media by the way for such a simple spelling error – judging from being Sunday. It probably meant he was delivering parcels for amazon.com. It’s possible a regular could have done it on the overtime list but very unlikely. Management would not use a full time regular at double time wages and premium pay for work outside normal hours for a regular. Which is standard, and not wrong to do.
But to be on the safe side before commenting further, I will say that said comments are based on the probability of being a CCA, and that I could be wrong, in which case I would need to revise my views, which I will if necessary.
It is a tragic event for the Rolla PO, and we can be glad nobody else was killed or injured in this situation. We do not know anything at this point about the carrier other than his age and what he did. So it would be unfair and premature to attack the USPS before more was known. It’s entirely possible he was in a depressive state, was having marriage or family problems, or could have had a problem with substance abuse. It’s certainly been known to happen.
It is also entirely possible the long hours and exhaustion may have played a role. In that situation, management would be expected, as should the NALC who approved the CCA program and therefore have to share responsibility for its shortcomings, to review the way CCA’s are used, with attention to overworking them, any managerial abuse that might be occurring, although that has not been revealed in Rolla as of now, and other factors that may have lead to this suicide and could be a repeat episode somewhere else if effective steps are not taken to give them some sort of relief.
Right now it’s best to offer condolences to the family of the carrier and be glad no others were harmed.
People have no idea how badly postal workers are treated by management and how indifferent district offices are to problems. They treat us like slaves- mandating us to work on our days off, mandating subs to work 7 days a week, not caring about the time it takes a body and mind to wind down and recover. This incident is horrible but does not surprise me at all.