Delivering the mail is becoming more dangerous.
Mail carriers are being held up, some at gunpoint, more frequently throughout the Bay Area including four USPS employees who were targeted in just five days.
One of the brazen attacks happened on Tilson Avenue in a quiet neighborhood of Cupertino last Thursday.
“The robber came up to the carrier, indicated that they had a weapon, took keys, took postal equipment, not mail, and then fled the scene in a getaway vehicle,” said U.S. Postal Inspector, Jeff Fitch.
Postal investigators said the getaway car was a four-door, white older model Infinity. They also believe the same vehicle was used in an attempted robbery of a mail carrier the same day on Norton Avenue in San Jose.
Last week mail carriers in four Bay Area cities: Cupertino, San Jose, San Pablo and San Francisco, were targeted.
“In three of the robberies, keys were taken,” said Fitch.
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He’s referring to keys mail carriers use to access large collection boxes for potentially hundreds of residents living in condos and town homes and to deliver mail in apartment buildings.
Neighbors are concerned about the safety of their own mail and the people that deliver it to them.
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“I am absolutely shocked. I’ve lived in the Bay Area for decades now and this kind of news to me, I've never heard it before in the past. Four attacks in just one week? That's shocking to me,” said Emily of Santa Clara County.
It's also a trend seen across the nation. According to U.S. Postal Inspection Service data provided to the Associated Press, postal carrier robberies in the U.S. increased 78% last year.
In the Bay Area, investigators say even clerks have been robbed of postal keys while attempting to empty large mailboxes in front of post offices.
