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Backstory, I live in a town that's just big enough you don't know everyone, but small enough that nepotism is still majorly active in any public employment.

I've previously told of the horror stories of the local Post Office, and now I can add to it. My neighborhood mailman doesn't like getting out of his truck, so if a package needs a signature he has been known to either forge a signature and toss it in the mailbox, or not deliver it at all and leave a "no resident home" slip. I was the latter, despite literally standing at the door eagerly awaiting my package. So I had to wait a day and physically go to the Post Office for my package of Space Dwarves from Hardcore Miniatures (from Russia, btw).

Upon arrival I see my package on a shelf behind the counter. The red foreign stamps are a dead giveaway. Attendant behind the counter takes a breif glance, and with a shrug gives me a " It's not here." Breif summary, the next 5 minutes is me point it out, argument about it not being for me (it was), how she can't read the made-up letters, and then pearl grasping when I said it was the Russian alphabet. She actually made me devulge the contents to her before releasing it to me.

Two weeks later I get a knock on the door. It's a Postal Police officer. The attendant reported me as suspicious for recieving packages from Russia. He looked as amused as I was. It took about 30 seconds for him to write off any suspicion. I'm still a bit WTF though.

Sounds like exactly the sort of excuse a russian spy would give.

Incidentally, never feth with the US postal police. Super high conviction rate, they mean business.

So I just found out the US Postal System has its own Police!

I knew that tampering with the mail is a Federal offence like. But never knew or imagined it had its own police force.

Does kind of make sense though, given how it all works between States.

I mean, kinda your fault for ordering stuff in from Russia in the current geopolitical situation. Somewhat frowned upon these days it seems, can't imagine why.

EDIT - You may have also got lucky. A friend had their package seized by customs in Europe as the packages were en route to the US. They eventually got it but it added a couple months of delays and tacked on some additional costs as they had to pay some sort of fee on it.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
So I just found out the US Postal System has its own Police!

I knew that tampering with the mail is a Federal offence like. But never knew or imagined it had its own police force.

Does kind of make sense though, given how it all works between States.

A lot of countries had a 'Mail Police' or still have one - makes a lot more sense once you realize that most of what gets done over the internet happened mostly by mail in the past, including shopping, but also stuff like Phishing, Theft and Fraud, stuff like Ponzi Schemes and such. There is a fascinating german television show from the 60s called 'Vorsicht Falle! - Nepper, Schlepper, Bauernfänger' (loosely translated as 'It's a trap! - Scammers, Conmen and Frauds') that acts like some sort of PSA and demonstrates common scams from that area in little movies, but also experiments with real people, and about every second scam involved the mail in some way, most of the time by getting people to send money for some service that was not really rendered, or by getting them to sign orders for overly expensive stuff It's a very neat document of the time - about half the problems would be easily solved by a quick google search, but others are alive and well today, like for example foreign exchange wire fraud, or scams involving appartments for rent Most of the early stuff is on youtube, too

The show was invented and moderated by Eduard Zimmermann, a legend of german TV, who also invented the show that would be adapted as 'Crimewatch UK' and 'America's Most Wanted' by other countries, and later-on founded the 'Der weiße Ring', a charitable organisation that supports victims of violent crime.

True, true. Certainly I’m familiar enough with frauds and scams professionally. And given different States have different laws, it does make perfect sense for Mail to be a Federal issue, and thus require a dedicated Police force.

chaos0xomega wrote:
I mean, kinda your fault for ordering stuff in from Russia in the current geopolitical situation. Somewhat frowned upon these days it seems, can't imagine why.

EDIT - You may have also got lucky. A friend had their package seized by customs in Europe as the packages were en route to the US. They eventually got it but it added a couple months of delays and tacked on some additional costs as they had to pay some sort of fee on it.

There is this. I was planning to order some stuff from a Russian manufacturer than promptly put that on hold when the current situation developed. Those plans shall remain on hold unless a positive resolution occurs.

 cuda1179 wrote:
how she can't read the made-up letters, and then pearl grasping when I said it was the Russian alphabet.

All letters are made-up

Phones can translate them just by looking at them these days, if they'd tried.
Someone had to have read them for it to have got through the postal service.

Some people

Should have just said it's the alphabet Ukraine uses

In towns of that size, relationships are everything.

For good and/or ill.

chaos0xomega wrote:
I mean, kinda your fault for ordering stuff in from Russia in the current geopolitical situation. Somewhat frowned upon these days it seems, can't imagine why.

I don't agree. If the package made it through customs they why would the post office decide to hold it on their own. Are they all Judge Dread at that location?

My town is the same size or smaller based on the description in the OP. I would be surprised if something like this ever happened to me here. I've only lived in the area for 10 years. Grated I can not receive mail out where I live and have to have anything coming via USPS go to my pobox.
I think the situation is just weird. I was going to orders a few bits from a recaster in Russia but given the climate and that things don't even ship for as long as 6 week I didn't want to deal with such a long delay. Sometimes the wait just isn't worth the trouble.
The last thing I got from Russia was three 1/43 scale Char 2C's Ordered right before the pandemic, very bad timing. However, the French infantry I ordered from Italy at the same time did eventually show up almost a year later. Bad luck but not the worst. That's Ebay for you.

Hope that USPS situation is sorted out for you now. Any follow up from them at all or is it too soon?

 warhead01 wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:
I mean, kinda your fault for ordering stuff in from Russia in the current geopolitical situation. Somewhat frowned upon these days it seems, can't imagine why.

I don't agree. If the package made it through customs they why would the post office decide to hold it on their own. Are they all Judge Dread at that location?

OP spelled it out. It was held because his mailman is lazy and didn't want to get out of the van to deliver the package, so he took it back to the office, at which point OP needed to go there to pick it up.

chaos0xomega wrote:

 warhead01 wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:
I mean, kinda your fault for ordering stuff in from Russia in the current geopolitical situation. Somewhat frowned upon these days it seems, can't imagine why.

I don't agree. If the package made it through customs they why would the post office decide to hold it on their own. Are they all Judge Dread at that location?

OP spelled it out. It was held because his mailman is lazy and didn't want to get out of the van to deliver the package, so he took it back to the office, at which point OP needed to go there to pick it up.

And he spoke about his interaction there which is what I am referring to.
Every shipping label I have had coming out of a different country ends up with an address and a name in English with barcodes and all that good stuff so the I can't read the funny letters is pathetic. Yes there will be international/foreign gibberish on a label but that's not all. Two apparently lazy postal clerks and someone there not too lazy to call the postal police. I'm amazed. It feels like calling the poe-poe would be more work.

Eh, many agencies receive a pretty constant stream of "see something say something" security reminders, I can't imagine it's any less at USPS. The clerk isn't the person with the training and experience to determine if there is a potential threat, that's why they kick it up to the postal inspector's office.

It's better from their perspective to have it turn out to be nothing and waste only a small amount of time than to miss some clue that could've prevented an incident.

did you atleast get paid?

Just reminded me of a time when I went to collect a parcel from our local office.

I was wearing a polo with the Raven Guard logo on the chest (my chosen faction at the time, I like to coordinate) and the guy manning the desk asked me if it was "German."

He seemed quite startled when I replied in no uncertain terms that it wasn't!

 ScarletRose wrote:
Eh, many agencies receive a pretty constant stream of "see something say something" security reminders, I can't imagine it's any less at USPS. The clerk isn't the person with the training and experience to determine if there is a potential threat, that's why they kick it up to the postal inspector's office.

It's better from their perspective to have it turn out to be nothing and waste only a small amount of time than to miss some clue that could've prevented an incident.

Nah, it was pure harassment.

If they thought it was a bomb or something dangerous, they would have had it opened by the postal police before he even got it.

Sad that this stuff happens in this day and age. My grandfather's parents spoke German, but were careful not to teach it to any of their kids lest they be thought traitors.

He was still upset about that 40 years after WW II, because it would have been really useful for him to know when he was guarding German PoWs!

Commissar von Toussaint wrote:
If they thought it was a bomb or something dangerous, they would have had it opened by the postal police before he even got it.

This. If you think something is dangerous you don't leave it on the shelf, you evacuate the building and call in the bomb disposal team. This is just a idiot who doesn't understand how international mail works.

"I'm not a Russian spy!" said the Russian spy.

Weirdest thing I ever got in the mail was a package from customs saying that they had destroyed a package sent to me by my aunt. It was a birthday card that had dried flowers on it, and customs did not like that, and as such incinerated the card.

They were nice enough to make a photocopy of it for me and send that.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
"I'm not a Russian spy!" said the Russian spy.

If he admitted it, we would know he was innocent, because spies always lie.

Commissar von Toussaint wrote:

 ScarletRose wrote:
Eh, many agencies receive a pretty constant stream of "see something say something" security reminders, I can't imagine it's any less at USPS. The clerk isn't the person with the training and experience to determine if there is a potential threat, that's why they kick it up to the postal inspector's office.

It's better from their perspective to have it turn out to be nothing and waste only a small amount of time than to miss some clue that could've prevented an incident.

Nah, it was pure harassment.

If they thought it was a bomb or something dangerous, they would have had it opened by the postal police before he even got it.

Sad that this stuff happens in this day and age. My grandfather's parents spoke German, but were careful not to teach it to any of their kids lest they be thought traitors.

He was still upset about that 40 years after WW II, because it would have been really useful for him to know when he was guarding German PoWs!

Interesting to know some folks on the internet have the power to know a complete stranger's intent. Must be quite a superpower.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
So I just found out the US Postal System has its own Police!

He isn't just a postman he's also a general.

Cuda: International Man of Mystery

 Ahtman wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
So I just found out the US Postal System has its own Police!

He isn't just a postman he's also a general.

No. Like Attorneys General, its an adjective, not a noun.

 ScarletRose wrote:
Interesting to know some folks on the internet have the power to know a complete stranger's intent. Must be quite a superpower.

I can only go off of the reported actions, which do not indicate any legitimate safety or security concern, but do indicate a desire to be obnoxious.

But I will also allow motivations that spring from laziness and/or stupidity.

 warhead01 wrote:


Hope that USPS situation is sorted out for you now. Any follow up from them at all or is it too soon?

No, no follow up. I don't really expect one. I still had the box and packaging, and showed it to him. Honestly, I felt bad for the guy. I could almost feel his desire to put his head in his hand.

Voss wrote:

 Ahtman wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
So I just found out the US Postal System has its own Police!

He isn't just a postman he's also a general.

No. Like Attorneys General, its an adjective, not a noun.

Jesus. It is a line from the clip from a comedy show.

Mail order cop has a different ring to it.

Amusingly a bunch of people on Dakka are considered spies by other governments. China for example has a law whereby you are considered a spy if the organisation you work for have an intelligence gathering or analysis function, which a surprisingly large amount do.

I was a member of a paramilitary organisation when I was younger. I was in the Scouts for a bit.