DETROIT – United States Postal Service workers held an “Enough is Enough” rally to raise awareness about the daily dangers they face while delivering mail in Metro Detroit.
The rally was held in Downtown Detroit on Monday (Nov. 6).
Southfield letter carrier Matt McBee recounted the day he was robbed at gunpoint while on his route.
“All I did was turn to the left for two seconds to get my mail and to get ready, and I heard a noise,” said McBee. “The next thing I know I looked up and there was a gun touching my head.”
The robbery of McBee occurred last July, but he told Local 4 it happened multiple times since.
His story, along with countless others, was why the United States Postal Service (USPS) gathered in Detroit and across the country.
Since 2020, armed robberies and violent attacks against postal workers have increased at a rate of roughly 30% year to year. That means more than 2,000 letter carriers have experienced a trauma we learned about firsthand on Monday.
“I never thought that it would happen to me,” said Tran Do. “I can’t breathe when I think about it.”
Do was the latest letter carrier to come face to face with armed robbers two weeks ago in Northville.
“Two of them walked up with the gun pointed at my stomach while they were asking for the equipment,” Do said. “I never think it happen in Northville because to me, Northville is very safe.”
“I can still feel the gun touching my head,” McBee said. “I turned around and saw an AK.”
McBee said he thinks about that day every day.
“I guess people don’t really think about what they do to us when they put us through this stuff as the trauma never goes away,” McBee said.
Their experiences are what drew dozens of fellow postal workers to the Fort Street post office in Detroit as these Enough Is Enough rallies are happening all over the country.
“There’s a network of folks out there across the country who have found us to be a target for them,” said Detroit Branch 1 President Sandy Laemel.
More than 2,000 of them became victims while on their routes over the past three years.
“Fourteen percent of these crimes have had both an arrest and a prosecution,” said Bryan Renfroe, President of the National Association of Letter Carriers.
Renfroe called for a tougher stance when it came to finding and holding the people who committed those crimes responsible.
“We just want to come to work, do our job, and go home in the same condition as when we got here,” Laemel said.
Postal workers said the situation falls on them. They said they could keep an extra eye out on letter carriers to keep them safer.
If there are people hanging around that they don’t recognize, cars parked right next to mail trucks, or even just leaving lights on now that it’s darker earlier, every little bit of them being aware can truly help them get back home at night.