Postal worker accused of dumping mail in DC neighborhood

FOX 5 EXCLUSIVE - FOX 5 has confirmed there’s an investigation into allegations of a postal service employee dumping mail instead of delivering it in Southeast D.C.

The Postal Service’s Office of Inspector General says they’re working to learn more about piles and even boxes full of mail being tossed into a dumpster in the Fort Stanton neighborhood. 

FOX 5’s David Kaplan spoke to a property manager Wednesday who said about five separate times over the last five or six months, she’s reported finding fully rubber-banded bunches of mail in a dumpster near a property on the 1800 block of Gainesville Street in Southeast. But she says what was dumped at some point in the last day — which appeared to be two full crates of undelivered mail — was the biggest amount.

Here’s a picture of it: What appears to be two full crates of undelivered mail that was pulled from that dumpster.

Over the course of the last few months, she said she’s called nearby businesses to let them know items were addressed to them. In one case, she says, it was a business waiting for checks.

Allen Waddell said he’d noticed something funky happening with his mail when he got a letter from a utility company saying he’d missed a payment.

"As time went on, I knew that I wasn’t getting mail. Not even junk mail and I was just concerned," Waddell told FOX 5. "Then I think I got a piece of mail that was really old and I was like, ‘this can’t be right.’"

Waddell shared video with FOX 5 of what he says has happened multiple times in the past few months: a truck backing up next to the dumpster, staying for a short time, then leaving.

FOX 5 has blurred the face of this driver because we have not confirmed this is a driver explicitly dumping mail. The video was taken Tuesday.

The property manager says in two decades of work, this is an unprecedented situation for her.

"This is my first time. I mean, slow mail, yeah. Maybe not getting it for a week or so because that carrier is on vacation, but never mail thrown in a physical dumpster where I see it and it’s people’s mail," she said.  "This could be someone’s monthly check that pays their bills. It could be a letter from their doctor that says ‘we want to see you.’ So why would you think you have the right to throw it away?"

In the same statement confirming an investigation is underway, the Post Office Inspector General said this is very rare and not tolerated, adding that their workforce is comprised of good, hardworking and honest people.