National Association of Letter Carriers (NALC) “Enough is Enough” rally will be held on Sunday, April 28 at 9 a.m., at Sandhill Crane Park, 2355 SE Scenic Park Drive in Port St. Lucie, with letter carriers, residents and community leaders, to bring attention to/demand an end to the assaults and robberies of letter carriers delivering their routes.

Letter carriers in the Palm Beach County and Martin County areas increasingly are targets of robberies and physical assaults as they deliver the mail to our area’s residents and businesses.

These brazen crimes, once exceedingly rare but now growing more frequent and more violent here, elsewhere in the state and beyond, are hurting letter carriers, leading to stolen mail, and damaging our community. The attacks hardly ever occurred just a few years ago; now they are increasingly common. This is unacceptable and must stop now.

In the past two years, a dozen letter carriers have been robbed at gunpoint in Palm Beach County, Martin County and Indian River County. There also have been other thefts and the sexual assault of a letter carrier.

The United States Postal Service needs to protect its employees here and around the country, and federal prosecutors need to prosecute these crimes against federal workers to the full extent of the law.

These assaults produce fear, trauma and physical injuries among letter carriers, and they also hurt the communities we serve. Because we deliver routes for years or even decades, know our customers, notice when something is amiss and often are first on the scene, we often alert authorities to an elderly resident’s health crisis, find a missing child, or put out a small fire before it engulfs a house.

But it is more difficult to pay attention to the wellbeing of the neighborhood if we constantly have to look over our shoulders or wonder why someone is approaching us.

It also is unacceptable that residents, businesses and other organizations have to worry about stolen mail/checks.

These crimes need to stop now. The Postal Service needs to protect us, and prosecutors/law enforcement need to send a clear message through their actions that such attacks will not be tolerated.

Planned speakers include NALC President Brian Renfroe; NALC Branch 1690 President Jeff Wagner; Eddie Davidson, the top NALC officer for the four-state region that includes Florida, and possibly others. They also will be available for interviews.

News organizations are welcome. For questions, feel free to contact: NALC Director of Communications and Media Relations Philip Dine at office phone 202-662-2850 or cell phone 202-812-1412 or email dine@nalc.org.