Mailmen Too Scared To Deliver Mail In Brownsville, Brooklyn
The United States Postal Service recently announced its decision to cut mail delivery from six days a week to five, so most of New York City and the nation won’t receive their letters on Saturdays.
But there’s one east Brooklyn neighborhood that won’t be receiving its mail—at all.
Almost entirely untouched by the gentrification that’s taken hold of most of the borough, Brownsville is one of Brooklyn’s most crime-ridden areas.
In 2011, Brooklyn-based photographer Reed Young took on a social project and spent two weeks photographing life in Brownsville. He described the neighborhood as “one square mile of public housing, basically.”
During the course of his project, he met a UPS driver who now delivers packages with a police escort after being once held up at gunpoint.
And just yesterday, a USPS worker informed The NY Post that the postal service is frightened of mail delivery as well.
“Have you seen this neighborhood? It’s on the news every day,” the anonymous worker said. “I wouldn’t want to go into those buildings.”
And while residents sympathize with the workers, they’re not quick to forgive their lack of letters.
“The postal workers have a right to fear for their life,” acknowledged Quantanya White, 38, a home health-care worker. “It doesn’t give them the right not to deliver the mail. Just because this place is bad, you’re not going to deliver the mail?”
“We do pay taxes,” said Crystal Caesar, 30, a social-service worker. “They could make more of an effort to ring my bell when I have a package. It’s a headache to come to the post office.”
Organized by the neighborhood chapter of New York Communities for Change, more than 50 residents gathered outside the Bristol St. post office yesterday to protest their disrupted service.
State Sen. Eric Adams called the postal hangup “unbelievable” and said he’d be pushing for a more thorough investigation.
“Government services can’t be stopped at the boundaries of high-crime areas,” he said. “They need to re-read that motto — through hail, sleet and snow.”
“We’re getting bad service here because it’s Brownsville — people on Riverside Drive get their mail at 10 in the morning,” resident Yolanda Matthews, 58, said “Something’s got to change.”
Sure, I would hate to have to go to the nearest post office to pick up my mail, but let’s be real about the more pressing issue: how does Seamless feel about the neighborhood? I wonder if Dominos delivers?
(The answers: there are three restaurants listed on Seamless.com for the 11212 zip code, as well as two Dominos locations in the ‘hood.)