It’s apparently “fishing” season in Greenwich Village — as in, mail fishing.
Local resident Alec Pruchnicki said, over the past week, he’s encountered two different mailboxes in the area with sticky residue on their letter slots — a seeming sign that someone was trying to retrieve letters from inside of them.
“Last week I went to put a letter in the mail collection box on the corner of Washington and 11th Streets,” he said, “and I noticed the slot to put the letter in had some sticky substance coating it, making it hard for the letters to drop. They almost got stuck where they could be retrieved by someone else. I called the post office hot line and they said this was happening all over New York City.
“Today I went to put in a letter at the box right in front of the P.O. substation on Hudson between 10th and Charles Streets and there was the same sticky stuff on the slot. The clerk inside the station said they knew about it and were trying to get it cleaned.”
In January, Fox News reported that complaints of mail fishing were “on the rise.”
Good idea, Kate! Much as I love the feeling of dropping a letter in the mailbox, I use my building’s mail pick-up service now, to make sure the mail is safe.
I noticed this sticky stuff in the mailbox slot on the corner of Bethune and Washington Streets. I now drop mail off inside the post office on Hudson Street.