A Memphis man was sentenced to nine years in federal prison in connection with armed robberies of several postal workers.
“Sidney Poitier Pilcher, Jr., a/k/a Slimey Sidd, 21, has been sentenced to over nine years in federal prison for aiding and abetting in the robbery of postal carriers while brandishing a firearm,” according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Tennessee.
United States Attorney Kevin Ritz said that last year, “the United States Postal Inspection Service (USPIS) began investigating complaints of stolen or missing mail from collection boxes in the Memphis area. During the investigation, officers seized stolen mail, black ripped jeans, and a lime-green reflective vest from locations frequented by Pilcher. The clothing matched the description of the masked suspect during the postal robbery committed on September 26, 2022. Pilcher pled guilty on February 16, 2023.”
United States Senior District Judge Jon P. McCalla sentenced Pilcher to 114 months in federal prison, followed by five years of supervised release.
The Star News Network has reported at length about the uptick in violence against postal workers, and theft of mail.
Frank Albergo, the head of the Postal Police Officers Association (PPOA) discussed the topic with The Ohio Star last year.
He said that as postal crimes have skyrocketed nationwide, funding for USPIS has plummeted.
“The Postal Inspection Service data revealed that mail theft reports soared by 600% over three years, from about 25,000 in 2017 to roughly 177,000 through August of 2020,” Albergo said, noting that “[Postal Police Officers] (PPOs) are a highly trained uniformed police force specializing in mail theft prevention and protection of postal employees.”
“PPOs, for years, were conducting mail theft prevention patrols by using data to target specific zip codes where mail theft was most prevalent. Unsurprisingly, it was working,” he continued. “But then on August 25, 2020, the Postal Service reinterpreted enabling statute in order to decrease postal police law enforcement jurisdiction thereby ending all postal police patrolling activities.”
Postal workers have recently been robbed in Chicago and in San Francisco.
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Pete D’Abrosca is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow Pete on Twitter.
Photo “USPS Worker” by Mick Haupt.
