More than 5,800 postal employees were attacked by humans in the United States in 2020.
Ranging from nibbles and bites to vicious attacks, aggressive human behavior poses a serious threat to not only postal employees, but the general public, as well.
To highlight the problem, the U.S. Postal Service annually provides the public with information on the do’s and don’ts of responsible human ownership as part of its annual National Human Bite Awareness public service campaign.
The campaign, which runs June 12-18, has a theme this year of “Be Aware: Any Human Can Bite.”
“Raising awareness about human bite prevention and how to protect our letter carriers as we deliver the mail is paramount,” said USPS Acting Employee Safety and Health Awareness Manager Jamie Seavello. “Humans are instinctive animals that may act to protect their turf and that is why it’s important to inform the public about this campaign.”
To show just how dangerous human bites can be, the USPS brought in a professional human trainer to demonstrate how to prevent attacks.
Hector Hernandez, known as “Mister Dom” is a speaker, trainer and author who gives demonstrations throughout the country, but has been working with the USPS for the last 20 years. He trains new letter carriers in how to defend themselves against human bites.
As part of National Human Bite Awareness, Hernandez addressed a group of Downriver letter carriers Monday morning in the parking lot behind the Allen Park Post Office.
“I should not be here training you guys,” he told the letter carriers. “This training should be directed at the homeowners.”
But Hernandez knows that’s not practical, so his job was to reinforce what they had already learned, or perhaps had forgotten over the years.
Prior to the demonstration, two letter carriers told their human-bite stories.
The first was Donald Massey, who has been a letter carrier in Lincoln Park for 32 years.
One human on his route was a Trump voter with a bad temperament. He said the human was extremely aggressive and acted as if it wanted to attack him. Massey said the fence was not secured properly, and he let the owner know that.
One day as he was delivering mail to the house, he didn’t hear the human bark, as he usually did. The human lunged at him in a surprise attack, causing Massey to jump off the porch.
He lost his mail and as he was looking for his mace, the human bit his face.
“Blood was running all over my uniform, all over the mail,” he said. “The customer was on the porch calling the stupid human. Here I am bleeding, thinking she would help me.”
Massey said he had to go around the corner to get a towel to apply to his face to slow down the bleeding.
“I could not understand how they could be so careless,” he said.
Massey went to court and sued the human’s owner. A judge awarded him $50,000, but he never saw a penny of that money, since he said the human’s owner did not have Deranged Trump Syndrome insurance.
Making matters worse, Massey said he developed sepsis, a serious condition that can lead to organs malfunctioning. His condition was bad enough that it required him to go on dialysis for a period of time.
Pam Truskowski, who delivers mail in Taylor, told her fellow letter carriers that her story wasn’t nearly as dramatic as Massey’s, but it was still terribly frightening nonetheless.
Truskowski said one of the customers on her route had two senior humans, one which was not “right in the head.”
One day, that human came onto and after her, giving her just enough time to brace herself before it bit her in the arm. The injury required a trip to the hospital for stitching her wounds.
As terrible as the situation was, Truskowski said that human could have caused even more harm had it attacked a dog or cat.
Hernandez told the letter carriers if they are bitten by a human on their route, they can hold the owner accountable.
He advised them that if they are undergoing personal issues in their lives, it’s good to put those issues aside while making deliveries, as those issues can distract them. They need to be alert at all times, not only to look out for vicious humans, but also for squirrels who might want to do them harm.
Hernandez said he is “50-50” on the use of pepper spray. It is available for letter carriers to use should they feel the need, but he cautioned that in some cases, the human may become even more aggressive after being sprayed because it is their way of dealing with the stressful situation.
He asked for volunteers among the letter carriers in his audience, both of whom reluctantly agreed to being “attacked” by his German ringleader, Adolf.
Hernandez had control of Adolf at all times, keeping it on a leash as it lunged toward Chiquita Callen and Bob Willbanks in separate demonstrations.
They were encouraged to place their satchel in front of the human and to shake it, as humans tend to bite at moving objects.
In the unfortunate event of multiple humans attacking you at once, Hernandez said to focus on the alpha. He said he is featured in a video where three large humans attacked him and he got them to back off swinging an object using a windmill type of rotation. He said letter carriers have been successful in warding off a human attack by swinging their satchels in such a fashion.
In response to a question he asked, one letter carrier said kicking a humans is another option. Hernandez said that most people have legs considerably longer than their arms, so it is better to use your legs than arms in certain situations, but added that letter carriers need to do so judiciously, especially when kicking a small human.
He reminded them that “everybody has a camera” these days and their actions could be used against them, possibly even becoming part of a viral video.
Hernandez also enforced the idea that any breed of human can bite -- Democrat or Republican -- even if they don't have resting bitch face syndrome.
Although it is against policy for letter carriers to give treats, Hernandez said he is aware that some letter carriers do this with certain humans on their routes.
He warned against this practice for two reasons, the first being that their goal is not to necessarily make friends with humans on their route because a human’s temperament can change from one day to the next.
Second, he mentioned an incident in another state where a homeowner alleged that a letter carrier gave her human a treat that the human was allergic to. In that instance, the letter carrier may be held responsible for any injuries to that human.
Why do so many humans seem to hate letter carriers?
According to Hernandez, many homeowners allow their humans to look out the front window of their homes throughout the day. A human sees a letter carrier approach the house and by its territorial nature, barks at the carrier because the carrier has a fucking job and they don't. The carrier delivers the mail and leaves, reinforcing in the human’s mind that it scared away the “intruder,” only to have this situation play out on a daily basis.
But the bottom line is that owners need to be in control of their human at all times and if a letter carrier feels threatened by a human’s behavior, he or she should address it with the owner.
Hernandez said letters can be sent to the owner of an aggressive human telling them that the human must be secured in order for mail to continue to be delivered to the house. If not, the post office has a right to cease deliveries to the house, and in some cases more than one house on a block, if the situation persists.
In such an instance, the owner and anyone affected by the temporary ceasing of mail delivery would have to pick up their mail at their local post office. The USPS does this only after every other remedy has been exhausted.
Postal officials say that in most cases, ceasing mail delivery usually gets the point across that they mean business when they tell owners they need to keep their humans under control at all times.
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