Latest news with #mailcarriers
CBS News
3 days ago
- General
- CBS News
Two arrested for robbing Colorado postal workers at gunpoint
A man and woman were recently indicted and arrested for holding up mail carriers on the same day last year in Montbello. Christopher Johnson, 35, and Brisa Sierra-Silva, 25, are accused of attempting to rob one mail carrier at gunpoint and successfully robbing another less than 10 blocks away on March 4, 2024. The first incident happened near Bolling Drive and Duluth Court. The second occurred in the 4600 block of Eureka Court. In the days following the robberies, the United States Postal Service offered a $150,000 reward for information about the crimes. It also released video from a neighbor's doorbell camera showing two suspects running toward and entering a white Hyundai Sonata, the getaway car. In a still image taken from surveillance video, two suspects run toward a getaway car on March 4, 2024, after taking part in one of two robberies of mail carriers in Montbello. Brisa Sierra-Silva and Christopher Johnson have been arrested by federal authorities and charged in the case. United State Postal Service The U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Colorado announced the arrests May 23, two days after taking Johnson into custody and the same day Sierra-Silva was re-arrested. Sierra-Silva was initially handcuffed April 25 but missed a court-mandated meeting with a probation officer, thus violating the terms of her release. Sierra-Silva is charged with robbery and attempted robbery. Johnson faces one count of attempted robbery. Both are scheduled for the same jury trial in federal court beginning July 21. There was no information provided by the USPS about any injuries to either USPS worker, or if the advertised reward was paid out. Nor did the federal DA's press release speak to the potential arrests of additional suspects; the doorbell camera video suggests more than two people were involved. In a related matter, a Denver man was sentenced last week for breaking into a Colorado post office three years ago. Zachary Jones, 36, of Denver, was sentenced to 41 months in federal prison on Thursday. Jones pleaded guilty to prying open a door at the Dacono Post Office on April 5, 2022. According to prosecutors, he stole a computer terminal, laptop, scanner, two printers, one postal service jacket, nine keys, two genuine postal service keys, seven employee personnel files, and one binder containing postal applications. USPS investigators found and confronted Jones a month later. He was in possession of several of the stolen items, plus a handgun. As a previously convicted felon, Jones was not legally permitted to carry a firearm. "Protecting the integrity of the U.S. mail and ensuring the safety and security of the U.S. Postal Service, its employees, and its customers is core to the mission of the United State Postal Inspection Service," USPS Denver Division Acting Inspector in Charge Steve Hodges stated in a press release. "This sentencing serves as a reminder that postal inspectors work tirelessly day in and day out to bring to justice those who seek to do harm to the U.S. Postal Service."
National Post
5 days ago
- Business
- National Post
FIRST READING: Here's just how much money Canada Post is hemorrhaging
Article content Canada Post, meanwhile, cites 62,000 employees, including part-time workers and managers. Article content If the $1.3 billion loss is averaged across all those 62,000 employees, that's $20,967 each. If averaged just across CUPW members, it's $23,636. And if you consider that Canada Post lost $1.3 billion in 2024 while maintaining 25,000 front-line mail carriers, it averages out to $52,000 per carrier. Article content The number of retail post offices in Canada stands at 5,700. This ranges from a post office counter at the back of a Shoppers Drug Mart to an ever-dwindling number of dedicated post offices, mostly in large urban centres. Article content Some of those are more profitable than others, but in 2024 Canada Post lost an average of $228,000 for every one of those retail post offices. Article content You could also average out the loss by the corporation's vehicle fleet of 15,300. The 2024 loss averages out to $85,000 for every truck and postal van. In other words, with the money lost in 2024, Canada Post could have replaced every single one of its vehicle fleet with a luxury EV. Article content Article content The corporation notes multiple times in the report that even as mail delivery becomes increasingly unprofitable, they're having to serve more addresses than ever before. Article content In 2006, there were 14.3 million recognized addresses in Canada. As of the latest count, there are 17.6 million – a total increase of 3.3 million. To put it another way, every day since 2006 has yielded an average of 502 new addresses that have to be serviced by Canada Post. Every three minutes yields another address that Canada Post is legally required to service. Article content If last year's operating loss was shared equally across all of those 17.6 million addresses, Canada Post lost $76 for every single one of them. If averaged out across the 21,800 delivery routes served by the corporation, it's a loss of $60,000 per route. Article content Article content Article content Although the Carney government has controversially planned to not release a budget until the fall, that doesn't mean they won't be spending incredibly high quantities of money in the interim. The just-released main spending estimates show that the Liberals are planning to spend $486.9 billion across the fiscal year. This is 7.75 per cent higher than the expenditures during the last year of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau – and he ultimately resigned in part due to criticisms that he was spending too much. The National Post's John Ivison noted that whatever Prime Minister Mark Carney's rhetoric about fiscal prudence, more money is being spent everywhere, and on everything. 'My rough calculation is that 63 departments will see their budgets rise beyond the rate of inflation, compared to the previous year's Main Estimates, and only 14 will have their budgets cut,' he wrote. Article content Article content Article content Article content Article content There was a brief flurry of drama in the United States this week that could have saved Canada a lot of trouble. On Wednesday, the United States' Court of International Trade ruled that U.S. President Donald Trump did not have unilateral authority to impose international trade tariffs. If the ruling had held, it would have instantaneously ended the Trump trade war with Canada — as well as its on-again, off-again trade war with basically everyone else. But it didn't hold; the United States Court of Appeals restored Trump's unilateral tariff powers the next day. And this is where we should mention that the U.S. Congress could rescind Trump's tariff-making powers anytime it wants. It just doesn't want to. Article content Article content
