The U.S. Postal Service has 1,000 armed security guards deployed throughout the nation, according to Frank Albergo, Executive Director of the Postal Police Officers Association, and a retired uniformed postal police officer. Albergo confirmed reporting earlier this month in Raw Story and the New Republic that USPS has contracted with Prosegur, a Spanish based multinational private security firm. The private force has been deployed to well over 50 locations including Atlanta, Chicago, Denver, Indianapolis and Tampa.
Albergo told WBAI, that unlike his members who take an oath of loyalty to the US Constitution, these private contractors have no allegiance other than to their paymaster.
For years, President Trump has fixated on discrediting the use of vote by mail and insisted it is rife with fraud, a claim entirely unsupported by facts. Earlier this year, the Supreme Court rejected President Trump's executive order to unilaterally put the Postal Service in charge of developing a federally vetted list of officially approved voters.
In a statement to the New Republic, USPS asserted the private guard service "has absolutely nothing to do with the elections" adding the deployment dates back to 2024.
"Prosegur has a history of alleged human rights violations, including an incident as recent as 2024 in which the company’s Brazilian subsidiary reportedly prevented indigenous people from accessing food and medical care at a nearby town, per an assessment by the Ethics Council of the Norwegian Government Pension Fund," the New Republic reported.
"Because of vicarious employment liability, the post office can't supervise these guards and the employer is Prosegur so these guards can do whatever they want until the Post Office catches them--the Post Office can't discipline them," Albergo said.
The leader of the union for USPS Postal Police did say that the national focus on the role of the US mail in our elections came as mail theft was reaching crisis proportions.
"Internal mail theft by non-career underpaid postal employees is also a serious issue and the response is to privatize the police function of the agency with our numbers now under 400 while they contract 1,000 private security guards," Albergo said.
CITY LEFT RESIDENTS IN POST 9/11 LURCH
This morning on What's Going On, 9/11 Health Watch lawyers Andrew Carboy and Matthew McCauley shared some of what they have learned from reviewing the 170,000 pages of previously secret 9/11 WTC files that Mayor Mamdani recently released from the Giuliani and Bloomberg era.
For several years, going back to the deBlasio administration, members of Congress had pressed for their release over the objections of the City of New York that was concerned about liability.
Just days after the attack, the US EPA claimed that the air was "safe to breathe" in lower Manhattan. A 2003 US EPA Inspector General report asserted that upbeat assessment was a complete mischaracterization formulated by the Bush White House to ensure the timely re-opening of Wall Street.
In the years since, roughly three times more people have died from their exposure to the air and WTC dust than the close to 3,000 that died in the terror attack itself.
This Sunday, the New York Times published a lengthy story entitled "Toxic Dust and Confusion After 9/11" which looked at the trove of just released documents from the perspective of how the City of New York addressed the concerns raised by the residents whose lower Manhattan homes were coated in toxic dust.
"New York officials did not come to grips with the problem until months after the terrorist attacks, newly released documents show," reports the Times. "They allowed residents to return home, supplying little more than advice to clean up the dust with wet mops."
Meanwhile, what's not discussed in the Times piece was just how lethal that dust was for those chronically exposed to it with over 600 members of the FDNY perishing from their exposure. The city's mechanics union, SEIU Local 246, lost 20 members who got their deadly dose of toxic dust from working on contaminated vehicles.
Carboy says the documents need to be studied with important historical context about the serious existing deficiencies in the city's Department of Environmental Protection before the stress of 9/11.
"Two weeks before the Sept. 11th attacks, the city's Department of Environmental Protection, which assumed the lead role in responding to air quality issues, the DEP was convicted of a felony by the Southern District of New York--DEP for violating federal environmental laws including water quality," Carboy told listeners. "The water was contaminated potentially with PCB laden equipment and there were lead violations in the city's upstate water supply. Those violations had occurred for years and the DEP was placed on probation for nine years. You have a convicted felon, two weeks before the collapse of the WTC, leading the city's air quality response."
Carboy continued. "I think it is noteworthy for the listeners to understand that in discussing this conviction, the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York Preet Bharara's office, at the conclusion of the probation in December 2009, wrote not only had the DEP violated applicable environmental laws for decades, but the DEP employees had been working without appropriate protective equipment in contaminated facilities---does that sound familiar?"
As the Times recounts, the real estate industry had an inside track with the Giuiani administration about how it wanted the risk characterized for residents in places like the adjacent Battery Park City.
"In late September and early October of 2001, Steven Spinola, the head of the Real Estate Board of New York, a trade organization of developers and landlords, sent missives to top aides of the city’s mayor at the time, Rudolph W. Giuliani, about reopening more of the development. 'We have to try to convince the residents that things have returned to normal,' Mr. Spinola wrote on Oct. 3, 2001," the newspaper recounted.
Months in, the city was thrown for a loop when the same EPA that had said the air was "safe to breathe" was sounding the alarm about the level of toxics in lower Manhattan's apartments.
"On April 9, 2002, a lawyer for the city expressed alarm that the E.P.A. was now asserting that even minimal amounts of dust inside residences should be regarded as a potential asbestos hazard. That ran counter to what the city Health Department had told residents: Use a wet mop," the Times reported.
"The mixed messages are all over the place," McCauley said. "You have the general counsel of the DEP and the general counsel of the Department of Health in the same meeting 'we've been telling everybody everything is ok just to make them feel safe' and the other one is saying 'how are we going to tell them they have to change their cleaning procedures if we have been telling them everything is ok? You are caught in a whirlwind and swirl."
McCauley says there are more documents to come.
"The next set of documents will be very helpful to see where this is going. The DEP documents we did not see before the settlement were a bit shocking to us to say the least." McCauley said. Both Carboy and McCauley are looking forward to seeing the results of the City Council's mandated independent probe by the New York City's Department of Investigation into what the city knew and when it knew it about the air quality in lower Manhattan after the attack.
McCauley wants the public to access and closely study the city documents that the Mamdani administration has now released, particularly 9/11 survivors and their families who may find information on a specific address in the FEMA zone that might help them establish a VCF claim or access to the 9/11 WTC Health Program.
"When you get into the Victim Compensation Fund we've had cases recently where somebody passed away in 2008 from a cancer they developed in 2006 and we just got them an award from the VCF. That's not something you see anywhere else. These programs do work," McCauley said. "Don't think you are not eligible."
