Amid surging mail theft, post offices failing to secure universal keys

The U.S. Postal Service has pledged rigorous action to combat the rising theft of Americans' mail — from checks and packages to the sensitive information that identity thieves crave.  17 missing arrow keys at the Eagan, Minn., post office in 2024. Inspectors noted "management was not aware of any missing arrow keys" until inspectors pointed it out. Seven years earlier, the inspector general also found unsecure arrow keys in Eagan.  At Carrollton Station in New Orleans, inspectors reported a secure space for keys "left unattended with the key left in the lock several times throughout our visit" in 2023.   At the Inglewood Carrier Annex in Southern California, inspectors this year found more than half of the keys on the inventory — 88 of 130 — were missing and found the staff had certified its arrow key list was accurate without "inventorying actual keys on hand."   When inspectors checked 16 postal facilities in a 2019 sweep across the Richmond, Virginia, region, they found lax arrow key security at 15 locations. At one site, "management could not locate 10 arrow keys" and facility managers had last updated the log of arrow keys more than two years earlier.  

But even as mail theft skyrocketed, from fewer than 60,000 complaints in 2018 to more than 250,000 in 2023, a CBS News investigation has found the postal service is not consistently taking steps to secure millions of universal "arrow keys" that open bulk mailboxes in apartment buildings and neighborhoods coast to coast. 

A CBS News review of thousands of pages of audits, court records and agency documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act show postal workers and supervisors not tracking the keys, not locking them up and not reporting them missing.