RENO, Nev. (KOLO) – The Peppermill’s Tuscany ballroom will be full this week, with the annual convention of the National Rural Letter Carriers Association.
The group’s president is Don Maston, who says rural letter carriers and those who work in the cities basically do the same job, they are just represented by two different unions. Rural letter carriers don’t wear uniforms, but often do deliver in the suburbs.
One thing both groups have in common, is that they have become targets of criminals much more often.
“We need something to protect us, the violence has risen,” said Cedric Taylor, a letter carrier in Texas.
“It used to be no one messed with letter carriers,” Maston said. “We have had carriers now that were robbed at gunpoint.”
Maston claims one case, that happened in San Francisco, resulted in the perpetrator only getting a 30-day sentence.
The union is fighting for stiffer penalties.
Maston says there have been over 2,000 attacks on mail carriers since 2020, and usually the goal of thieves is to steal their arrow key, which can open all the mailboxes in a certain area. Matson says that concept is outdated, and legislation is in the works to fix it
“H.R. 7629, it would replace the antiquated arrow key with a more modern version,” he explained.” So, if a criminal would steal one we would deactivate it and it would be useless to the criminal.”
Changing from the old arrow keys to new electronic fobs would cost billions nationally, but Maston says lawmakers from both sides have been on board. But he is not happy that our areas congress representative, Mark Amodei has yet to sign on.
A rally is set for Tuesday, Aug. 26 at City Plaza at 6:30 p.m.
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