Archive for June 24, 2023

Is the post office suffering from high crime?

Posted: June 24, 2023 by navygrade36bureaucrat in crime
Tags: , , ,

I work as an instructor for a few companies, none of which reside in my local area. Whenever I finish a teaching gig, the company I taught for pays me, sometimes electronically, sometimes with a check. So naturally I was curious when I saw this headline the other day:

Now, reading a bit further (because I don’t trust any headline, and you shouldn’t either), I realized its NOT the Postal Service saying this, its instead a member of the Better Business Bureau. That person had good reason to say this, because she noted that check fraud jumped from 300,000 incidents to 680,000 incidents in 2021, despite Americans writing less checks every year.

From: https://goodmorningwilton.com/break-in-reported-at-wilton-post-office-outside-mail-box/

The issue doesn’t seem to be with residential mailboxes, but rather with the large, outdoor blue post boxes. Post boxes are being broken into at an alarming rate. In some cases, the criminals rob the postal worker to get the key to open the blue boxes. In other cases, they simple beat the boxes open with some blunt instrument. Once they get the checks, it’s not hard to erase the amount with a chemical solution and re-write the check for significantly more than was originally intended.

Checks are probably one of the few items to still be regularly mailed, and the post office was quick to note that its still safe (in their words) to mail checks:

“The Postal Service delivers about 130 billion pieces of mail over a year to 163 million customers,” said Paul Shade with the U.S.P.S. “It still remains the most secure way to transmit anything from any type of mailing.”

Paul Shade, USPS

The Post Office also noted it was installing high security boxes that are more difficult to break into.

There is a trend in the statistics. Going city by city, each “bubble” lists the incidents and arrests. Take a look at California:

Los Angeles: 54 incidents, 1 arrest
Oakland: 51 incidents, 4 arrests
San Francisco: 20 incidents, 2 arrests

And at Texas:

Houston: 97 incidents, 12 arrests
Dallas: 25 incidents, 2 arrests

Vs. Florida:

Miami: 15 incidents, 7 arrests
Tampa: 3 incidents, 3 arrests

Although I didn’t have full access to the data to calculate an arrest to incident ratio, I suspect that California would come out on the losing end of that calculation. Florida’s numbers are significantly lower than expected, and I’d reason its the fact that they make arrests and actually prosecute crimes. If you knew you could simply steal a bag of mail, cash a bunch of washed checks and face little to no chance of repercussion, well, why wouldn’t you?

This post represents the views of the author and not those of the Department of Defense, Department of the Navy, or any other government agency.

Three Worst Case Russia Scenarios

Posted: June 24, 2023 by datechguy in war
Tags: ,

Under the 24 hour rule (and because I was distracted by burial of my Godfather) I paid little attention to the situation in Russia but it appears to be VERY serious to say the least. Revolution in a nuclear power is always inherently dangerous but Wretched the Cat on Twitter who always has excellent insights noted the most serious international aspect of what is going on which leads to what I think is the key question in this situation.

Or think of it this way, if you think the anarchy in Libya post Gaddafi is bad, picture it repeated in a nuclear armed Russia? How badly is something like that going to end?

And if Putin thinks the entire state is going down and taking him with it what makes anyone think he won’t decide to Nuke Ukraine or even the west to go out in a blaze of glory?