A Denver letter carrier was robbed in broad daylight Thursday afternoon near the intersection of East 22nd Avenue and Albion Street, and federal postal inspectors are now asking the public for help identifying the person responsible. The carrier was not physically injured, but the robbery marks the second time in a matter of weeks that a Denver postal worker has been targeted while out on a route.
According to KDVR, the robbery happened around 1:30 p.m. Thursday, and the United States Postal Inspection Service confirmed it is investigating. Investigators described the suspect as a Black man standing about 6 feet 2 inches tall and weighing roughly 210 pounds, dressed in a dark-colored hoodie with an orange or red face covering. The suspect reportedly fled north on Ash Street after the robbery, per the same outlet's report.
USPIS has asked anyone with information to come forward, and the agency says a tip leading to an arrest and conviction could be worth up to $150,000. No further details have been released about what, if anything, was taken from the carrier during the encounter.
A Second Denver Postal Worker Targeted in Weeks
This is not the first attack on a Denver postal employee in recent weeks. Another postal worker was subjected to an armed robbery in Denver on Sept. 14, though investigators believe the two incidents are unrelated, the station's report notes. USPIS has not said whether a suspect has been identified in that earlier case.
The string of attacks on letter carriers comes amid a broader national debate over how safe mail carriers are on their routes. CBS Colorado reports that USPS has said letter-carrier robberies have actually increased nationwide, with criminals increasingly targeting carriers for their Arrow and Modified Arrow Lock keys — the universal keys used to access mailboxes and parcel lockers. The U.S. Government Accountability Office has likewise noted that robbers have increasingly gone after those keys, though it characterizes the trend as emerging rather than fully quantified.
Conflicting Pictures of a National Crime Trend
That account stands in some tension with figures from USPS's own employee newsroom, which says robberies of letter carriers have dropped 27 percent since the Postal Inspection Service expanded its Project Safe Delivery initiative in 2023. USPS Employee News reports that more than 2,400 arrests have been made since the initiative expanded, and that the Postal Inspection Service carried out 1,300 investigative actions and made dozens of arrests in high-crime areas over the past year alone. CBS Colorado notes that under Project Safe Delivery, USPS and USPIS say they are working to harden physical targets against criminal activity and reduce crimes against postal employees.
Whether that initiative is gaining or losing ground against the problem, the numbers from the two accounts do not fully reconcile, and neither claim resolves the other. For carriers walking routes on Denver's streets, the immediate concern remains more personal than statistical: another coworker targeted, another address added to a growing list of incidents investigators are trying to piece together.
USPIS has not released additional details about a motive or about whether the Thursday robbery is connected to any broader pattern of incidents. Anyone with information about the robbery near East 22nd Avenue and Albion Street is urged to contact the Postal Inspection Service.
