Mass Transition - In-plant Impressions

By Dawn Greenlaw-Scully

To Catch a Thief

Trying to track down missing transit passes, Metro helped postal and law-enforcement officials take a mail thief for a ride—to prison

In Metro’s mail room, part of Office Services, you’d expect staff to perform duties such as sort and ship, not sleuth and solve. Yet, when the transit agency became the victim of mail theft, the Office Services team acted as a letter-perfect crime-solving apprentice.

Among the agency’s major mailings are regular shipments of light-rail and bus transit passes to retail ticket vendors, such as grocery, convenience and department stores.

“There can be many thousands of dollars worth of passes in one envelope, so we keep tight control over the mailing process,” notes Director of IT Quality Assurance and Office Services Kent Swagler, explaining that a certified return receipt is attached to each envelope, and acknowledgment of receipt is required.

In early 2008, Metro was notified that a couple of vendor sites had not received their weekly and monthly passes. “We would get back torn, empty envelopes,” Swagler reports.

According to Swagler, Metro’s Office Services and Transit Passenger Revenue departments contacted the United States Postal Service-Office of Inspector General (USPS-OIG) to report the missing mailings, which were valued at more than $100,000. Both Metro and the USPS suspected foul play.

The two organizations worked jointly to crack the case.

“The USPS-OIG worked closely with our departments to identify losses and conduct surveillance on mailings,” he recalls.

Swagler reports that, in August 2008, the thief was caught red-handed. “The USPS-OIG arrested a postal tractor-trailer driver when he was observed stealing the passes,” he details, explaining that the driver had thrown envelopes against a wall, which caused them to rip, and then claimed that the passes must have been lost when the envelopes were torn “accidentally.”

Metro mail room employees had been reinforcing the 6x9˝ envelopes by wrapping them in packing tape. To increase security, Swagler switched to a pre-printed polyester envelope.

“Even though these envelopes are more expensive, they’re worth it,” he opines. “Unless you take a knife to it, this envelope is not going to break.”

The case was brought to a satisfactory conclusion in spring 2009. “[The driver] was sentenced to a year and a day in federal prison and ordered to pay more than $76,000 in restitution to Metro,” Swagler confirms.

Though horse-drawn omnibuses and old-fashioned trolleys may have once been public transportation mainstays, they made way long ago for modern bus lines and light rail systems. After all, a transit authority that doesn't keep pace with vehicular developments, trends and innovations will find itself going nowhere fast.

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