In this episode, our hosts are joined by Chief Postal Inspector Gary Barksdale to learn about America’s first federal law enforcement agency, the U.S. Postal Inspection Service. We’ll take a deep dive into the role the USPIS plays in fighting crime and learn about the various careers available within the agency.
Long Summary: The U.S. Postal Inspection Service is responsible for protecting the Postal Service’s employees, infrastructure, and customers by enforcing laws that prevent people from using the Postal Service to commit crimes. As America’s first federal law enforcement agency, the Postal Inspection Service has a long proud history of fighting crime against those who would attack our postal system.
In this episode, our hosts are joined by Chief Postal Inspector Gary Barksdale to learn about the incredible role of the Postal Inspection Service, tips on what you can do to avoid becoming a victim of mail fraud, and the various careers available at the Postal Inspection Service.
United States Postal Inspection Service (uspis.gov)
Dale Parsan:
Hey everybody. Welcome to this episode of “Mailin It!” The official podcast of the United States Postal Service. I'm your co-host Dale Parsan.
Yasmine DiGiulio:
And I'm Yasmine DiGiulio. In this episode, we'll be talking about the Postal Inspection Service, the law enforcement arm of the United States Postal Service. The Postal Inspection Service is responsible for protecting the Postal Service’s, employees, infrastructure, and customers. They do that by enforcing laws that prevent people from using the Postal Service to commit crimes such as fraud and narcotics smuggle. Dale, true or false: The Postal Inspection Service was America's first federal law enforcement agency?
Dale Parsan:
I think I know this one. That's true Yasmine. When I was researching for this episode, I read that the inspection service traces its roots all the way back to when Benjamin Franklin first established mail service in 1775. Today, we'll learn all about the US Postal Inspection Service from Chief Postal Inspector, Gary Barksdale, who has been at his post since March, 2019. We'll talk to Chief Barksdale about what the Postal Inspection Service does and the role of the Chief Postal Inspector, the Postal Inspection Services responsibilities, and priorities, how the Postal Inspection Service protects people from mail fraud and what people can do to avoid becoming a victim. And finally, different careers at the Postal Inspection Service. Chief Barksdale, welcome.
Gary Barksdale:
Thank you, Dale, Yasmine, it's my pleasure to be here today.
Dale Parsan:
To start things off, please tell us a little bit about the Postal Inspection Service and what you do as Chief Postal Inspector.
Gary Barksdale:
Well, as Chief Postal Inspector, I'm a direct report to the Postmaster General, and primarily I oversee all operations of the Postal Inspection Service. You stated our mission really is to support the Postal Service and all of its more than 600,000 employees, 32,000 retail facilities and entire infrastructure. We're a federal law enforcement organization primarily comprised of postal inspectors, and we really investigate any crime that involves the mail. And, and as you stated earlier, we have a long prior history of fighting crime against those who would attack our postal system. In fact, we're over 246 years old. Inspectors carry firearms. They make arrests, they serve federal search warrants and subpoenas, and last year they made over 5,000 arrests. But they're also supported by a host of other professional and technical administrative positions. We have a uniform security force. Our postal police officers provide security at key facilities throughout the country.
Very proud of our crime lab, which is a fully accredited crime lab where our forensic scientists do fingerprint analysis, drug analysis, tool, and firearm impressions. So very proud of their accomplishments. They're a big part of our team. We have two service centers, one in Memphis, Tennessee, where we do all background investigation. We mentioned the 600,000 employees so we do background investigations on all potential employees. They handle all of our security clearances. And then we have a criminal service center in Chicago to support our criminal investigations. We have a criminal analyst, other security specialists and other technical positions within the Inspection Service. Now we're stationed throughout the US, including the US territories of Puerto Rico and Guam. And we also have a few international positions that people will be surprised to know. We have a full-time inspector in Germany. We have one at the Netherlands at the Hague. We have an inspector in Jamaica and then we have an inspector in Bern Switzerland who's a part of the Universal Postal Union.
Dale Parsan:
Wow. I had no idea.
Yasmine DiGiulio:
So Chief Barksdale, you have a long history with the Postal Inspection Service including I believe three years as Deputy Chief Inspector. What are some of the other roles you've had within the agency?
Gary Barksdale:
Yes, I have about 23 years with the Postal Inspection Service. I started many years ago. I was living in Virginia at the time and my first assignment was actually in Los Angeles. So it was kind of quite the surprise, but it turned out to be the best thing in my career to experience something new and Los Angeles was a great place to start my career. Obviously there's a, there's a lot of crime fighting to be done in a city like Los Angeles. From there, I was fortunate enough to be promoted back here to Washington DC and headquarters, where I spent some time in internal affairs, my first leadership position from there, I moved out to Phoenix, Arizona, and then my first executive leadership role was the Inspector In Charge of Houston division. And then somehow kind of made my way back to DC, where I spent some time in the field headquarters working on our criminal programs and then eventually promoted into Deputy Chief and then in 2019, was fortunate enough to be appointed by the Postmaster General is the Chief Postal Inspector.
Dale Parsan:
Wonderful. So what made you want to become a Postal Inspector?
Gary Barksdale:
Well, prior to being a Postal Inspector actually was a local detective here in the state of Virginia. And I was in a narcotics vice unit. And one day I was sitting around in our unit and a Postal Inspector walked in talking about a drug case that he had, and that was really my first drug to the Postal Inspector. So we worked that case and I got to know him. He became a good friend, but more importantly, I got to know all the cool things that Postal Inspectors did. And I wanted to be a part of that.
Dale Parsan:
So in all of your years, working in law enforcement, what are some of your standout cases? What are the ones that really stand out in your mind?
Gary Barksdale:
I probably go back to my early days when I was a brand new inspector in Los Angeles. Remember I came from a local police department in Virginia. So working in Los Angeles actually gave me the opportunity to work some cases of some famous people. I won't give their names, but it it's pretty cool to be at your office at nine o'clock in the morning. And then, you know, at noontime, be in Hollywood working some cases. So that, that was pretty cool.
Dale Parsan:
That actually does sound pretty cool.
Yasmine DiGiulio:
It sounds like it every day would be really different in terms of working as an inspector and just the different things that you get to work on. That sounds really interesting to me.
Gary Barksdale:
Yeah. That's one of the things that attracted me to the job every day is different. You never know what your day's gonna look like. It's you, you may walk into the office with one intent, but as you're following a case, as you're following an investigative lead, it leads you to do something else.
Yasmine DiGiulio:
That's really neat. So does the Postal Inspection Service get involved whenever a crime is committed using the mail or are there sort of certain or specific crimes that you guys really focus on?
Gary Barksdale:
Yeah, we do. We, we generally get involved whenever a crime involves the mail, but you know, we have to prioritize and we're generally prioritize in four kind of large buckets. Obviously our number one priority is the safety of our employees. We mentioned earlier the Postal Service employees over 600,000 people. That's a lot of people. So that's our top priority. There are things like robberies or burglaries or such. We also have a core of specialty trained inspectors. We call 'em our dangerous mail investigation inspectors, and they investigate things like white powders or suspicious parcels. And we, we determine the need for that shortly after the 2001 anthrax mail. And so they have they're specialty trained and they have really specialized equip to be able to go in and test the powder and quickly resolve it. 99.9% of the time it's, it's not a harmful substance, but in that very, very slim chance that it is, we want to know as early as we can that this is a harmful, harmful substance. We also do a lot of work around emergency response that you might have noticed recently there was a tornado that swept the Midwest. So we go in with disaster recovery assessing the condition of our facilities to make sure there's safe to do there. And also what locating employees that might be missing. One of our other large priorities is drugs in the mail. Obviously with the opioid crisis, just really gripping our country and a number of overdose deaths continually to increase. We, we placed a lot of emphasis in ridding the mail stream of drugs. A couple years ago, we created what we call our Contraband Interdiction and Investigation Team. We referred to it as CI2. Their sole purpose is to investigate drug traffickers who will attempt to use the mail to traffic, their drugs. We developed a pretty rich strategy around that, where they focus on traditional investigation like any drug unit will do. They do interdictions. We use data analytics technology, and then we're leveraging our partnerships. Obviously, DEA is the law enforcement agency that's primarily responsible for ridding drugs in America, but we support their mission. They support our mission and we work very well with DEA, FBI, HSI and Customs & Border Patrol. So we try to leverage those partnerships as well.
Dale Parsan:
I want to hear more about the forensic lab. What kind of work is done there? I know you mentioned fingerprinting and whatnot, but, but what's some of the larger work? Do we also participate with other agencies, you know, for things like surge support, you said it's, it's certified or accredited.
Gary Barksdale:
Yeah. So they're fully accredited lab and they would do really do all the cool things that you see on TV from any crime lab. And they do work with other labs. For instance, we have initiative now with DEA and that initiative deal with the analysis of drugs, trying to determine where the drugs actually originated by the chemical makeup of the drug itself. So that's really exciting. So we work with that. And they also have response capabilities. So they're, they're located in Dulles, Virginia in an unfortunate case of an employee homicide or some other horrific crime, they have the ability to deploy and process the car, collect evidence right on the, the crime scene, take photos and basically document the crime scene for us.
Dale Parsan:
Wow. Really impressive.
Yasmine DiGiulio:
I think another main focus of the Inspection Service is mail fraud. Is that correct? Can you explain what that is?
Gary Barksdale:
Yes, we have a long legacy of fighting mail fraud ever since the mail fraud statue was enacted in 1872 through the early 1900’s. Investigations like Charles Ponzi, who's considered the father of illegal pyramid schemes. And we see these scams all too often and they, they all too often focus on our most vulnerable population. They, they focus on our military, they target the unemployed and the elderly.
Yasmine DiGiulio:
So how does inspection service fight mail fraud?
Gary Barksdale:
Yeah, so protecting our elderly and our veterans, one of our highest parties. So to start with we're part of the Department of Justice, Trans-National Elder Fraud Strikeforce. This is a multi-agency Strikeforce and recently we launch an initiative to attack the money mules. So if you're not familiar with money mules, money mules are people that at someone else's direction they receive and move money that are obtained from the, the victims. So in early December we announced the results of this money mule initiative. We charged over 30 people. We served over 4,000 warning letters and more importantly, we recovered approximately $3.7 million in fraud proceeds that we hopefully will be able to get back to, to the victims. We also work with the industry. Companies like Western Union and MoneyGram to make sure that their practices and policies don't favor scammers. So, so we do that. And then we have a really robust prevention campaign. You know, at the time that we go in and arrest someone, it's almost too late, the crime is already occurred. So we put a lot of emphasis on prevention. We launched something a couple years ago called Operation Protect Veterans, where the Inspection Service provided information and resources to our military veterans, their loved ones and their other friends and family. Recently we've employed a number of victim service specialists who can work with elderly victims. One of the things troubling, things that we'd see with our elderly victims is not only are they victimized one time often, they're victimized multiple times. So our victim service specialists can aid them in getting help, reaching family members and working with local social services type resources to get them help. So they're not revictimized, and that's something that everybody can do right now. If you go to our website, USPIS.gov, we have a number of PSAs and short videos on there that'll give you prevention tips. They're kind of how latest scams give you prevention tips of how not to become a victim.
Yasmine DiGiulio:
That's really great. I think for a lot of people, you know, if you become a victim of a scam, you might feel shame and you might not wanna ask for help. And then maybe you are susceptible because you just don't know the warning signs and what to look out for. So I think these sort of customer outreach efforts are really, really great.
Dale Parsan:
Absolutely. So in, in an age where First Class Male is in a decline, where customers are using more electronic forms of communication... Does that mean that we're seeing a decline in these, in these types of criminal cases? Or is it just exacerbating and complicating things?
Gary Barksdale:
Yeah, unfortunately we're not seeing a decline, you know, criminals continue to evolve. You know, we talked about the explosion in e-commerce where criminals take advantage of the current situation. I'll give you a really good example. During the early parts of the COVID crisis, we saw just an explosion and scams around COVID. We saw hoarding, price gouging of personal protective equipment. We had cases where online sellers or distributors were charging 10 times the value of an item like gloves and masks. We saw scams related to the economic impact payment. And then obviously something that's been around since the early 1900’s, we obviously saw a lot of scams around phony COVID cures and treatments where someone would go online and sell a vitamin or supplement that would prevent someone or allegedly prevent someone from getting COVID.
Dale Parsan:
So with the world being in the way it is right now, or communicate is so instantaneous. And we live in a society where, when we want things, we can get them fairly quickly using online marketplaces and, and various communication trends. I feel like it would take the Inspection Service, a lot of resources in order to stay on top of all this. How is that? Can you talk a little bit more about the proactive stance that the Inspection Service has to take?
Gary Barksdale:
Yeah, you're right with the speed of information now it works for us in some occasion and it works against us, right? It works for us when we need information, it works against us because the criminals also can adapt and change their pattern very, very quickly. So we invest in a lot of tools to help us manage, and not only communication, but manage all the data we may receive, or manage all the data that we'll have to quickly cull through. And when I was a, a brand new inspector, we did everything manual. For instance, if you subpoena records and you had grand jury subpoena material, I literally took a ruler and went line by line. Now we have technology that can comb through doing keyword searches to pull out relevant information.
Yasmine DiGiulio:
So trade offs, you have more tools, but so the other people who are making your job necessary.
Gary Barksdale:
So we're, we're constantly looking for tools and intelligence and ways, ways to do things smarter, not necessarily harder.
Yasmine DiGiulio:
So as Dale kind of alluded to earlier a lot of communications are moving from mail into online communications. Does the Postal Inspection Service have any initiatives related to cyber crime prevention or enforcement?
Gary Barksdale:
Yes. we actually have stood up a cyber crimes unit. They work very closely with the Postal Services’s Chief Information Security Officer, and they investigate all cyber intrusion, but they're also our integral part of as the Postal Service grow their digital products. They play a role in providing security for those new digital products and e-commerce activities.
Yasmine DiGiulio:
Oh, like Informed Delivery - , one of our digital products. Now, in terms of other issues or crimes with the mail system does the Postal Inspection Service have any initiatives related to package theft for residential customers? I'm thinking of, you know, if I'm a residential customer, the package gets delivered on my front porch and someone comes by and swipes it. Is that something that the Inspection Service would investigate or is that more of a local law enforcement matter?
Gary Barksdale:
Both. As I said earlier on, we work very closely with other law enforcement agencies. You know, we refer to it as, as porch pirate. It, it is very concerning, but we do have some initiatives, particularly on this time to work with local police departments to do some for lack of better word - sting operations to arrest would-be porch pirates.
Dale Parsan:
So you had mentioned previously that there's online resources for customers to go on and, and learn more. I think you refer to them as PSAs. So what are some other items that, that customers can, can go through? Is there any other places that they can reach out for, for assistance?
Gary Barksdale:
Well, I would give 'em some advice. I wanna drive you to our website. You can also go to the FTC website as well, and other law enforcement websites as well, but really there are some simple tips, particularly when it comes to protection that you can follow. One is encourage your loved ones to ask for advice before they make any large financial purchase, right? If you're gonna make a large financial purchase you should get some advice or you want to, you want to get some advice. Something is very simple that I do is review your credit card bank statements monthly. For years, my bank has tried to get me to discontinue mailing my statements and review it online, but I'd use that envelope when I receive my statements once a month. That's my sign to go in and review my statements for an unauthorized charges. And you can do that also for your loved ones. And you can also work with your financial institution to give you alerts. So I have an alert on my kid’s accounts. For instance, if they purchased something more than a hundred dollars, I got an alert. So for more than a hundred dollars, you can go in and review that transaction. Those would be early warning signs that your loved one or elderly parent has been taken by a scammer. There's also do not call lists, you can ask to be placed on, you can register numbers so scammers won't call. I encourage my mother to only answer known callers. So we programmed all the family members on the phone, so only answer known callers. So those are ways. And then Yasmine, you mentioned it earlier. It is really critically important that you're actually reported, you know, because of shame, a lot of people will not report it, particularly if they don't lose a lot of money.
Yasmine DiGiulio:
So I had a question, I know you mentioned contraband in the mail in terms of things like opioids or, you know, other drugs that go through the mail. But I remember, you know, about 20 years ago now there was the anthrax through the mail. And I was just wondering, you know, if you could talk a little bit about what the Postal Inspection does to detect those sorts of hazards and what kind of protective measures were put in place.
Gary Barksdale:
Yeah. So we have in our, in all of our facilities we have something called BDS, which is Biohazard Detection Systems. But more importantly, as I mentioned earlier, we have over 400 specialty trained inspectors that have specialty equipment to be able to go in and immediately test the substance to determine whether it's hazardous or nothing. And last year they responded to over 2000 incidents and were able to resolve all of them.
Yasmine DiGiulio:
Wow, that's really impressive.
Dale Parsan:
I have a very selfish question. Do we have any drug sniffing dogs?
Gary Barksdale:
The short answer is no, but the, the true picture is we use dogs in our facilities every single day, because we have such good relationships with our partners that have dogs, primarily local police departments. But we do utilize dogs from Customs and Border Protection as well.
Yasmine DiGiulio:
Dale, you won't be able to play with the dogs if they're working.
Gary Barksdale:
And, and you know, we, we actually have a new initiative as part of our, our robust drug strategy where we've actually start to deputize local police departments to come work hand in hand side by side with postal inspectors every single day. Now some of our task force officers have been allowed to bring their local PD dogs with them. So we do have dogs as a part of our drug task force.
Yasmine DiGiulio:
Are there any common misconceptions about the Postal Inspection Service?
Gary Barksdale:
Yeah. If you hadn't been introduced to the Postal Inspection Service the title itself sometimes can be misleading. Postal inspector… people think lyrically spend most of our time just inspecting packages when the reality is we are an investigative unit, we spend most of our time investigating crimes related to the Postal Service.
Dale Parsan:
Chief, understanding the size and scope of the Postal Inspection Service and, and hearing your own story about getting exposure to the Inspection Service and, and really being motivated to try and become a part of this agency, is there, is there any opportunities in the near future for any of our listeners who might be interested in joining?
Gary Barksdale:
Yeah, so we're always looking for talented people the best way to know what jobs we have available is to visit our website - USPIS.gov.
Yasmine DiGiulio:
And then, so why do you think that people come to work for the Inspection Service? What kinds of people are you looking for?
Gary Barksdale:
Well, first of all, it's a great place to work. You know, we spend a lot of time fostering an environment of engagement and teamwork and of collaboration and what we're looking for more than anything is integrity and good character. We train a lot of our skill sets but we have to start with integrity and character. And then for our inspector positions there are some minimal requirements, like a four year degree. You have to come to us prior to your 37th birthday, unless you're a veteran, there's exceptions for your veterans. But we have other positions that are not inspector positions. What our qualifications are really based on the position for instance, forensic scientists, right? So you'd have to have some type of forensic science degree to do it, but we, we have a variety of positions that we're looking for.
Yasmine DiGiulio:
What does the training look like for Postal Inspectors?
Gary Barksdale:
The training is really, really good I must say. So we have a fully accredited academy. That's here in the DC area. It's in Potomac, Maryland. It's a 16 week resident program meaning you stay on campus for the full 16 weeks. And we teach you pretty much everything. We teach you, obviously criminal law, but we teach you how to drive. We teach you how to shoot. We teach you how to defend yourselves and more importantly, defend others. So it's really a good time. It's a beautiful facility. And the students really learn a lot. They’re well prepared to go out and be United States Postal Inspectors when they leave our training academy.
Yasmine DiGiulio:
Oh, that's really interesting. I had no idea!
Dale Parsan:
The audience can't tell this because clearly we're on a podcast, but my jaw has been dropped for most of this podcast. because I'm just blown away at, at just the size and scope of the Postal Inspection Service.
Gary Barksdale:
Yeah, it is really a reflection of the size and scope of the Postal Service. You know, the Postal Service is one of the largest civilian employers in our country and probably in the world. So it's a, it's a massive job which creates a lot of opportunity for inspectors to do many different things. And that's one of the unique things about being a Postal Inspector. You're a federal law enforcement agent but you support and protect a business and that's very important into us and it actually provides a unique opportunity. As you know, the Postal Service is moving. We have a new Postmaster General Louis DeJoy… he's unleashed his Delivering for America Plan. So the, the forecast is really good and we want to be a part of that growth within the Postal Service.
Dale Parsan:
Agreed. And, and where does the funding come for all of the Postal Inspection Service operations?
Gary Barksdale:
We're 100% funded by operating funds from the Postal Service. No tax dollars goes to my salary or anybody in the Postal Inspection Service.
Yasmine DiGiulio:
You've really shown just the scale of the Postal Inspection Service and all the work that they do to try to protect our employees, protect our facilities as well as protect anything moving through our system. It's really impressive.
Gary Barksdale:
Well, thank you. I enjoyed my time here today. And hopefully you learned something that you didn't know about the Postal Inspection Service. I'm, I'm very proud of the accomplishments of all the men and women that make up our organization.
Dale Parsan:
Okay. It's time for Did You Know. In this segment, Yasmine and I each share of fun historical or cultural fact about the Postal Service.
Yasmine DiGiulio:
It's a chance for us to shed some light on parts of the Postal Service and its history that most people probably have never heard of. Mind if I get us started this time, Dale? Did you know that at the farthest a US postage stamp has ever traveled is 3.2 billion miles and counting?
Dale Parsan:
That seems kind of impossible.
Yasmine DiGiulio:
Not if that stamp was launched into outer space! Just before the New Horizon spacecraft launched from Cape Canaveral in 2006, the NASA mission team put a postage stamp onboard the spacecraft. Specifically it was a 1991 Pluto Not Yet Explored stamp. I like to think that stamp was still in place when New Horizons did its fly by of Pluto in July, 2015.
Dale Parsan:
Of course. But Yasmine, if New Horizons passed Pluto in 2015, it must be a lot farther away than 3.2 billion miles by now.
Yasmine DiGiulio:
You're right. The Guinness World Record for stamp travel was awarded at that 3.2 billion mile marker shortly after the spacecraft left Pluto. But since then, New Horizons has traveled another 1 billion miles to the Kuiper belt where it continued to send images back to earth. In fact, NASA has said it's possible that New Horizons has enough power and fuel to keep exploring well beyond 2030.
Dale Parsan:
Didn't NASA and the Postal Service team up for an Apollo 11 anniversary stamp of few years ago?
Yasmine DiGiulio:
They did, it was for the 50th anniversary of the first moon landing in 1969. Actually the Postal Service and NASA have collaborated a bunch of times over the years. One of the most recent featured images of the sun on a series of Sun Science Forever Stamps. The 2021 Sun Science stamp issue features 10 different images of solar activity captured by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory.
Dale Parsan:
Hmm. Some might say that's out of this world.
Yasmine DiGiulio:
Very funny. What have you got for this episode?
Dale Parsan:
Well, for my Did You Know we're going from Pluto to Jupiter?
Yasmine DiGiulio:
Oh, cool. The planet Jupiter?
Dale Parsan:
No, I'm talking about the hot air balloon named Jupiter, which made the first ever air mail flight for the Postal Service in the late 1850s.
Yasmine DiGiulio:
Interesting. I didn't realize the Postal Service used hot air balloons to deliver mail.
Dale Parsan:
Well, technically they didn't. And it turns out there's a good reason for that. In August of 1859, an aeronaut named John Weiss loaded 123 letters onto his balloon in Lafayette, Indiana and took to the sky in route to New York city. Weiss was a famous balloonist back in the 1800’s. He built his first balloon in 1835 when he was only 27 years old.
Yasmine DiGiulio:
Indiana to New York? That seems like a really long trip for a balloon.
Dale Parsan:
Well, it would've been. Unfortunately it didn't take long for that historic first flight for the Postal Service to go south. Literally. Weiss had to get the balloon up to 14,000 feet to find a wind current. Unfortunately, that wind was blowing to the south, not the east. After covering only about 30 miles in five hours in the wrong direction, Weiss landed in Crawfordsville, Indiana. That mail eventually made it to New York, but onboard a train.
Yasmine DiGiulio:
I guess air mail would have to wait for the early 20th century.
Dale Parsan:
That's right, but we'll get more into the dawn of air mail in a future episode. For now anyone who wants to reminisce about what might have been can visit the Smithsonian National Postal Museum in Washington, DC. The museum has a piece of mail from Weiss's first and only mail flight. It's a letter with a 3-cent stamp that was sent to an address on New York City's West 26th Street. That wraps up. Did You Know.
Yasmine DiGiulio:
Wait, Dale, we didn't establish a winner today.
Dale Parsan:
I was hoping you wouldn’t bring that up. I think it's clear to say that space travel beats misguided hot air balloon.
Yasmine DiGiulio:
I agree. Just wanted to hear you say it. Thanks for joining us for Did You Know.
So Dale, what did you think about our conversation with Chief Barksdale?
Dale Parsan:
I'm gonna keep saying it. I am blown away at all the work that the Inspection Service does… Specifically the forensics lab. The fact that we have a self-funded location that that can handle all of the crime-fighting solutions that we need is, is really impressive. How about yourself?
Yasmine DiGiulio:
I thought to be honest, I thought you were gonna say you wanted to advocate for those canine dogs.
Dale Parsan:
I do. I do. If the audience doesn't, doesn't pick up on this yet, I absolutely love dogs.
Yasmine DiGiulio:
For me it was really interesting to hear about all of their outreach efforts around scams particularly for the elderly and for the veterans. You know, it's so easy for people to get targeted by things and not know that something is wrong until it's too late. So I think Chief Barksdale’s point putting that out there and being proactive is really important. And it's, it's great to hear about all the different ways that they try to reach out to customers.
Dale Parsan:
Yeah. I think we take it for granted how accustomed we are with technology and it's, it's easier for some of us to pick up on scams that we may receive via phone calls and text messages, but for other members of our community, it's not so easy. And, and it's easy to lose sight of that.
Yasmine DiGiulio:
So Dale, do you think you could make it through the training to be a Postal Inspector?
Dale Parsan:
I'm not so sure.
Yasmine DiGiulio:
Well to our listeners. Thank you for listening to our episode with Chief Barksdale. If you are interested in learning more about how to protect yourself and loved ones from fraud, or if you are interested in employment information and think you can handle training, please visit www.USPIS.gov.
Dale Parsan:
Don't forget to subscribe to “Mailin It!” wherever you get your podcast to make sure you don't miss the next episode. And follow along on Instagram @USPostal Service, Twitter @USPS, and on Facebook.