Is this illegal? (US mail question)

Factual Questions
1

Okay, totally hypothetical question here. Umm yeah, that’s the ticket.

Let’s say I’m waiting eagerly for a package to arrive in the mail. Let’s say today, around the time the mail normally comes, I go out to the mailbox to check if it’s here yet. (The mail at my apartment is delivered to a centrally located set of mailboxes, like in most apartment buildings.) Let’s say, I find the mail truck has arrived, and two large tubs of unsorted mail are sitting next to the mailboxes (not in the truck.) Sitting on top of the pile of mail is THE BOX I’m waiting for, it’s got my address and everything. The mailman is nowhere to be seen.

Would I be committing some grievous federal crime by taking the box that is addressed to me? Nobody saw me do it, and if I ran into the mailman on the way back to my apartment, I could show I.D. to prove it was mine. It’s not like I took mail belonging to anyone else, and it’s easier than making TWO trips to the mailbox in one day. Umm…hypothetically speaking that is. This never really happened. Really. I’m just wondering.

J.E.T.

2

IANAL, but I would say it’s breaking the law, especially if it had some kind of add-on service, like delivery confirmation, registered mail, etc. If they ‘lose’ your package, it would create havoc for them. Since I doubt that the mail is seperated in the mail truck, I think that what you hypothetically did was illegal.

3

I’m in the UK, and my hypothetical postman regularly hands me hypothetical letters if I meet him in the street, although he assures me it’s illegal - with some glee, I might add. Mind you, it’s also technically illegal to park your car in front of your house here, so maybe they’ve got a way to go before they get round to reforming the entire statute book.

4

Just to clarify, this hypothetical package wasn’t registered or certified, it was a regular parcel.

I also forgot to ask – if the postal carrier notices this hypothetical package missing, does he have to file a report with the postmaster, or perhaps the police?

J.E.T.

5

Big time and more.

I know. I had the unfortunate experience of running into USPS law a few years back. And it was all over tampering with mail in the persons mailbox.

Actually, I was charged with driving over twenty some mailboxes on drunken high-school excursion, if you want the truth.

Long story short- Myself and some friends took out a series of mailboxes out on the way home from a party. Well, it was miles apart and all people that we didn’t particularily like. About twenty eight boxes all told. All dumb and childish, I know, but at least I got the headline in the local paper… mom would be proud.

Anyrate, in my instance, the police were interested in replacing the mailbox and/or getting the people off their backs. So long as I worked out an agreement with the people’s mailboxes I took out, no problem- I wouldn’t be charged with unknown bad charges.

All fine and good. I go and apologize to the people and offer a new box and whatever else that’s needed to keep them happy. All fine until the Postal service gets involved. They start asking the people whether or not mail was in the box at the time that we destroyed it. They’re questioning… I’m wondering…, “Why are they interested? This is a local police matter?’ Right.?”

Not so. So long as you screw or otherwise mess with goverment mail, they’re gonna come after you with federal charges if they please. But only if they please… and feel you need a woopin’.

Luckily, thank God, they didn’t come after me. They let me resolve the problem with the people and work it out. Had they not, and decided to get pissy with me, I’d be facing some serious federal charges.

Tampering (It’s what they wanted to come after me with) mail is not something they take lightly. Or, they’ll take it lightly if you’re cool, but nail your ass if you’re not.

Next time, let the guy deliver… learning after the fact the power they have is really no fun at all.

6

Hmmm…

I just realized this doesn’t relate to your story too well. Sorry, I was reminiscing.

I’ll still say, however, “Don’t mess with the postal service. They are an entity all their own… and they don’t like humor.”

7

I would assume that it is considered illegal even though it was addressed to you. If the mail carrier hands you the mail it’s one thing but to take it out of their vehicle could be grounds for legal enforcement because it is still considered in their hands. 'Sides, the vehicle is not your property, technically. It would be no different if you took something out of anyone elses vehicle without permission or acknowledgement of the driver of the car.

Look, they are responsible (I say that lightly) for all packages and mail that are sent and delivered. Unless the mail carrier has fully accepted that the parcel is in the proper hands or box/address it was addresses to it still remains the property, er the responsibility of the USPS.

Of course this is just my view, take it or leave it but I still think it’s borderline illegal, who knows if you took other packages in their eyes.

8

Big time, no question. My mail delivery person has a little cart which he leaves on the sidewalk as he walks into buildings. You cannot take anything out of it, nor (I believe) put something in).

While the package is addressed to you, it is still in the possession of the USPS, and is their responsability until they deliver it.

On a side note, how safe would you feel about your mail (assuming that you have a certain level of safeness now), if it were okey-dokey for folks to wander up to the mail car and dig through it’s contents looking for their piece of mail?

9

I agree that it is illegal, but I just wanted to point out the the hypothetical mail was not in a hypothetical mail truck. It was sitting next to the mailboxes.

I would think the carrier does need to report missing mail. The carrier has no way of knowing who took the hypothetical package. My question: Why not just wait around until the carrier comes back? It’s unlikely that the carrier would let unattended mail sitting around for a long time.

10

Our mail carrier has seen me in the building and knows I live there because I sometimes let her into the secured lobby (when, for example, she & I get to the door at the same time and she has to fumble for her master key while I have mine handy).

I once stood next to her in the lobby & watched her fill the mail boxes, and when she came to mine, I told her that was my box and she could just save herself the trouble and hand me my mail. She said she couldn’t do that- it has to go into the box & get locked up.

I pressed about why she had to do that, and told her that I could easily prove my residency (“look, see how I’m unlocking my front door? See me going inside my Condo? That’s because I live here!” [The way I’ve typed it here sounds like I was being difficult- but not so. She has been our carrier for years & we have chatted amicably in the past]).

So it seems like there must be some commandment about making sure that TV Guide gets into the intended mailbox, and not into the hands of some goober who might be me with a mask on.

11

I remember when I was a paperboy that some customer went away on vacation and didn’t tell me. Usually, I held papers until they came back if they asked me to. But for this person, I just kept putting them in the box. (It was a 24-48 page/day paper, so two weeks worth would fit in a standard box.) But when no more would fit, I put them in the mailbox.

The next day, the mail carrier saw me on my rounds and asked if I delivered on the street of that customer. I said I did, and he told me the illegalities of using a certified US mailbox for anything but US mail. He didn’t threaten me with arrest or anything, but I got the message that Uncle Sam takes the mail very seriously.

12

Well, I can be of some help here… but not quite yet. My father actually works at the post office (sorts the mail to the carriers) I will ask him if he knows anything about the legalities of this. Unfortunately he is at work now… I will call him when he gets home in about 3 or 4 hours and let you know what he knows.

13

This seems to be true for PO boxes too-big signs saying “don’t forget your keys” because it’s against federal law for them to hand you your mail across the window. I have to believe this is the law and not just them being unhelpful, because this is a town where they will see a couple of people in line and hurry to open another window. :slight_smile:

14

Well I got off the phone from my father and this is what he says. He says that if you take the mail, even if it is right in front of your house it is illegal, but if the carrier were to give you your mail that you are okay, even if it is down the street in front of your house etc. So deriving from that it the the post office’s possession until they turn it over to you. Hope that helps clear it up for you.

15

I thing you should consider how this affects the mail carrier. He knows he had a package. He steps out for a minute, and when he gets back it’s gone. He assumes it’s stolen. He blames himself for this theft, and never knows what really happened.

But then, you’re Jeremy’s Evil Twin. Which means it wasn’t your package at all - it was Jeremy’s! Shame on you for stealing Jeremy’s mail!

16

I ran this past the Better Half when he got home from work. He says, first of all, yes, it would be both illegal and immoral.

Illegal, because technically, legally, the mail belongs to the Post Office until it’s delivered by the mailman. You would be breaking the law by taking your package.

Immoral, because you’d be driving the mailman crazy. He’d come back and there would be a package missing. He wouldn’t dare report it because he’d get in big trouble for leaving his mail unattended.

Which brings me to the one big thing that popped out at the B.H. as he read the OP. Letter carriers aren’t allowed to leave mail unattended. If you’re delivering a big apartment complex, where you have to bring the mail in from your (locked) truck in buckets, you don’t leave one bucket unattended while you go back out to your truck for another one. You can get fired for doing that. You’re supposed to deliver the contents of the first bucket and THEN go back out to your truck and get another one.

He says in actual practice, therefore, there’s nothing that would happen to you if you did take your package out of the unattended bucket. The mailman wouldn’t dare report it missing, because he’d get in trouble.

So either your whole scenario is, as you said, totally hypothetical, or else you have one heckuva stoopid mailman. :smiley:

17

Well, that’s kinda what ticked me off in the first place. ANYONE could have taken this hypothetical package; this ain’t a high-crime neighborhood, but we’ve got a lot of Yuppie kids around here with sticky fingers. Plus, I’ve seen the mail carrier leave packages right on my doorstep, in total plain view, many many times. They’ll even knock on the door and walk away before I have a chance to answer it. I even complained to the post office once when the carrier left a $500 package on my doorstep unattended. Didn’t seem to do any good.

Ok, here’s a new question…many times I will see letters left on top of the mailboxes, left by people who got the letters stuck in the wrong mailbox. Is this type of mail still considered in the custody of the postal service? I know that actually taking a letter addressed to someone else would be grossly illegal (and I’ve never, ever taken anything…never saw anything that looks like it had money inside it…) but what would happen if I simply collected up all those letters and threw them in the trash? (Again, this has never happened…not even hypothetically. :))

J.E.T.

18

To further go down Jeremy’s self-hijacking road, what about mail for previous occupants that was not forwarded? I once got a W2 meant for the previous occupant of my apartment. They clearly didn’t leave a forwarding address, since it wasn’t forwarded! So even if I left it out by the mailboxes, what would the USPS have done with it?