COMPTON – Postal workers staged a protest to bring attention to the violence they face while working in Compton on Oct. 4.
(Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times)
One by one postal employees discussed the violence they faced with a writer from the Los Angeles Times.
Sharon Whitaker, a 63-year-old letter carrier and union steward who grew up in Compton, said the job feels a lot more dangerous these days. She prays every day before taking off on her route.
“I ask God to bring me back home safe,” Whitaker said. “But every time a car comes down the street I’m ducking. Because you never know what will happen.”
Ever since a shooting last September near South Park in Compton that left two men dead and a woman injured, Whitaker won’t park her mail truck in the area while she walks her route.
“This problem is growing,” Renfroe, the union president, said in a speech to workers at the Compton rally this week. Targeted armed robberies, assaults and shootings, he said, have become “part of our job.”
Renfroe called for the federal government to help. An estimated 14% of crimes against letter carriers have been federally prosecuted and resulted in an arrest, he said.
“You know what that tells me?” he asked. “That 86% of the people that do this get away with it. That has to change.”
Keisha Lewis, a union representative who oversees carriers in Nevada, California, Hawaii and Guam, said she receives two to three emails every week about a letter carrier being robbed or attacked — something that was, until recently, unthinkable.
Noticeably missing from The Times article was a quote from Congresswoman Maxine Waters who represents the area which includes Compton.
The last time Waters was publicly seen supporting the post office was in 2020 around election time. Waters and Congressmembers Nanette Barragán and Jimmy Gomez were protesting changes proposed by the PostMaster surrounding voting by mail. Since then, nothing.
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Emails have been sent to her office asking what her office can do to address the violence facing postal employees.
Hopefully, she responds.
To read the horrors facing postal workers in Compton click here.
Los Angeles Times contributed to this report.