Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds. But a sufficient number of carjackings and armed robberies appears to have done the trick in Santa Monica, California. In one neighborhood, postal carriers have recently been subjected to a series of assaults and robberies. The problem became bad enough that the local post office notified the public that they would not be dispatching carriers to the worst block in the neighborhood. Residents of that section of town were informed that they would need to come down to the post office and pick up their mail themselves. Of course, that means that the residents will now have to navigate the dangerous streets themselves if they want their mail, offering even more targets to the criminals. So how did things get this bad? (Daily Caller)

The United States Postal Service (USPS) reportedly canceled its service for one block of homes in a Santa Monica neighborhood after multiple reports of mail carriers being threatened and attacked in the area.

Residents now need to retrieve their daily mail at a local USPS office, though packages are still being delivered, CBS Los Angeles reported Sunday.

“My immediate reaction was just disappointment…frustration,” said an affected resident, Courtney Smith.

The essential Libs of TikTok account on Twitter sums it up nicely, with a report from a local news outlet.

USPS has suspended mail service in parts of Santa Monica, CA because the mailmen kept getting assaulted and attacked. They say it’s not safe for people to be delivering mail. Unreal. California is a hellhole. pic.twitter.com/q97kYYTT1s

— Libs of Tik Tok (@libsoftiktok) April 11, 2022

A seemingly deranged man on that block attacked two different postal workers with a broomstick recently. The police say that they are aware of the incidents and have had reports about the man, but he still hasn’t been arrested. Nobody seems to be exactly sure why. But the attacks and robberies are taking place in broad daylight.

Santa Monica is a physically small town, but it’s been a huge tourist hub, frequently drawing more than 200,000 visitors per day. But the tourism industry may be in danger of shrinking quite a bit. A recent survey showed that Santa Monica, once viewed as a desirable vacation resort, is now ranked as the second most dangerous city in California based on FBI crime statistics. To put that in perspective, the only California city ranked as being more dangerous is Compton, long known as the criminal gang hub of the west coast and made famous in countless rap songs.

Santa Monica isn’t the only American city to become too dangerous for mail delivery to take place. In 2020 and 2021, residents in multiple neighborhoods in Chicago stopped getting their mail because some of the streets were simply too dangerous to send the carriers out. Some of them were even getting carjacked. In some areas, the Post Office didn’t even put out an official statement to residents informing them of the decision. The mail carriers simply stopped showing up and the customers only learned of the new “arrangement” when they called in to complain.

How embarrassing must this be for the municipal government of Santa Monica? They’ve allowed things to get so bad that it’s not even safe for the mail carriers to walk the streets in the middle of the day. Will they have to assign some of their dwindling number of police officers to go and personally escort the carriers from door to door? That might be a short-term solution, and perhaps they should be considering it. But in the long run, like so many other cities, Santa Monica is going to have to focus on refunding and increasing their police force and putting more of the bad guys in jail. (Or perhaps in a mental institution in the case of the guy with the broomstick.) Turning a blind eye to this problem in the name of “social justice” is not going to compel the gangs or other random criminals to retreat. As long as there is an open field of potential victims and few law enforcement officers to protect them, bad actors will show up to take advantage of the situation. And knowing that they are unlikely to do any time behind bars for their actions only emboldens them further. If nothing is done and tourists stop coming to Santa Monica, it’s going to turn into a ghost town. And then it will probably surpass Compton on the “do not visit” list.