Calls for postal worker protection grow after Chicago carrier murdered

Illinois state Rep. La Shawn Ford, D-Chicago, is pledging to do all he can to slow an ongoing trend that has seen at least 140 Chicago postal workers attacked while on the job over the last year.

In the latest incident, longtime city letter carrier Octavia Redmond was gunned down July 19 in the West Pullman neighborhood by a man wearing a ski mask as she went door to door. Authorities said the assailant fired at least eight shots at Redmond before fleeing in a waiting vehicle.

“Like me, the members of [National Association of Letter Carriers] are outraged by this senseless act of violence that took an innocent woman’s life,” NALC President Brian Renfroe said in a statement. “For far too long, violent crime against letter carriers has been on the rise. Shockingly, now it is not uncommon for letter carriers to be targeted, assaulted, and even murdered. This is completely unacceptable, and we need immediate change.”

Ford said he’s in talks with members of Congress on how to address the trend.

“Every postal worker is traumatized by their work conditions and feeling unsafe and that's not right,” Ford told The Center Square. “We need to figure out if we need to collaborate with postal police or the state and federal government figuring out exactly what we need to do to provide protection for them.”

Whatever the course of action comes to be, NALC Branch 11 President Elise Foster argues a plan for change can’t come soon enough.

“I don’t know what that might look like, someone following the letter carriers on their routes like the Guardian Angels did before or what, but something has to happen,” she said.

In the days after Redmond’s murder, postal workers and union leaders gathered at a South Side union hall to demand lawmakers take action, with one speaker after the other telling the crowd the time for just more talk coming from lawmakers has long passed.

Ford is in full agreement.

“It's not always adding different penalties to perpetrators. It's also important to put penalties out there that should act as a deterrent, and that's what we want,” Ford said. “Politicians have a certain law that protects them against, violence. That legislatively could be the change that is needed, that any type of violence against a postal worker could automatically be some type of felony.”

As it is, Ford argues postal workers have become unfair targets in the minds of far too many criminals intent on cashing in.

“They have checks in their possession, hundreds of thousands of dollars sometimes, packages in their possession and we have to protect them,” he said. “Postal workers are targets and they're under attack. Why would they want to go out and continue to do their job?”

Renfroe said Congress must act.

“Earlier this year, bipartisan lawmakers introduced the Protect Our Letter Carriers Act in both chambers of Congress,” Renfroe said. “This comprehensive solution would deter these crimes from happening and hold those who commit these horrific acts accountable. In honor of Sister Redmond, we urge Congress to swiftly pass this bill. The nation’s letter carriers cannot wait any longer.”

The U.S. Postal Inspection Service is now offering a reward of up to $250,000 for information that leads to an arrest and conviction in Redmond’s case, while her family has launched a GoFundMe to help cover costs.

Greg Bishop contributed to this report.