HOUSTON – This is how it’s supposed to work, United States Postal Service carriers opening your mail boxes with what’s called a arrow key and then delivering your mail.
But over the past couple of years, Texas and especially Houston, have become a feeding ground for mail thieves, who break into cluster mail boxes using copies of the same keys mail carriers use and steal whatever they please.
”Oh we’ve had so many things taken. We have had multiple packages stolen, my wife has had paintings stolen, I had boat titles stolen, checks stolen and the entire neighborhood is up and arms,” Kevin Ruszkowski, a mail theft victim said.
Kevin and his son Kyle say they both have been robbed blind by mail thieves who broke into their cluster mail boxes in the Bay Oaks subdivision going as far back as August of 2022.
So last December residents in the Bay Oaks neighborhood called me for help in getting some action from the USPS.
Immediately I started investigating the problem and reporting on it.
I also contacted the Harris County Precinct 8 Constables office, as well as the United States Postal Service, fully explaining the problem and what homeowners there were going through.
And what do you know? Residents of this neighborhood say the mail thefts suddenly seem to stop.
Not only that, just weeks later in February, two people, a man and a woman were arrested for stealing the mail in this same area.
Not only that, an unnamed, mail service source, tells me that, a few weeks after those arrests a third suspect was arrested.
And now, the postal service is reportedly planning to install brand new digital locks on all the mail clusters in the Bay Oaks neighborhood.
”I really think you were instrumental in solving this issue for us,” Kyle said.
The new, digital locks on these mail box clusters in the Bay Oaks neighborhood are expected to be installed in the coming months.
Those locks will totally change the way mail carriers access and open those mail boxes to deliver the mail, but the locks that the people have on their individual boxes will now change, so they can access their mail just the same way they always have.
When those new digital locks are installed KPRC 2 Investigates will bring you the story.