Letter carriers rallied Sunday outside the downtown Minneapolis Post Office to raise awareness and call for on-the-job safety for their ranks.

Previously rare, attacks on letter carriers have spiked in recent years, with more than 2,000 violent attacks nationally since 2020, said leaders of the National Association of Letter Carriers (NALC). Letter carriers in Detroit, Phoenix, Cincinnati and other cities have rallied with a similar message in recent months, according to media reports.

“Since the Postal Service was founded nearly 250 years ago, letter carriers in uniform have been able to walk down the meanest streets of this country without incident,” NALC President Brian Renfroe said to an crowd of more than 60 that turned out in below-freezing weather. “Nobody messed with us, remember that? That’s no longer the case.”

Joseph Tiemann, NALC Branch 9 executive vice president, said Minnesota wasn’t on the list of places that had seen such attacks until November, when carriers in Edina and Brooklyn Center were robbed at gunpoint within 24 hours of each other.

“Fortunately, in these two cases, nobody was physically harmed, but the trauma lives,” Tiemann said, adding that he had heard Friday that a suspect had been caught in the cases. “This is something that a letter carrier should never have to experience.”

Patrick Johnson, NALC regional national business agent, said there have been more than 30 violent attacks against letter carriers in Region 7, which includes Minnesota, Wisconsin and the Dakotas, in 2022 and 2023, including the Dec. 2022 shooting death of Milwaukee letter carrier Aundre Cross. Nationally, Johnson said, only 14% of assaults on letter carriers resulted in prosecution.

Assaults are increasing as fraudsters have developed schemes that make getting access to mail profitable, Renfroe said.

One of those schemes is check washing, which involves stealing checks from the mail, changing information on them, such as payee name and dollar amounts, and then depositing or duplicating them, Renfroe said.

“Gaining access to the mail is not the reason for 100 percent of these crimes, but the vast majority — either to steal the mail directly or to gain access to our keys that we use to access mailboxes,” Renfroe said.

Speakers at the rally called for the U.S. Postal Service to do a better job of protecting workers, and for the U.S. Justice Department to deter attacks by heavily prosecuting people who attack letter carriers.

In May of 2023, the U.S. Postal Service and Postal Inspection Service launched Project Safe Delivery, an effort to reduce postal crimes with measures including enforcement surges, installing more secure mail collection boxes and replacing old locks with electronic ones as carriers were targeted for their keys.

At the rally, NALC leaders also asked community members to keep an eye out for carriers, just as carriers often serve as the eyes and ears of the neighborhoods they work in.

“If you see your letter carrier walking down the street, watching them walk to the end of the block could literally be the difference between this happening or this not happening. Just keep your eyes open,” Renfroe said.

Daniel Brito, who delivers mail south of downtown Minneapolis, showed up to the rally with a homemade sign that read, “My safety is flat rate priority.” He said he and his father are both letter carriers and the prospect of either of them being assaulted is terrifying.

Manon Wojack has been a letter carrier in north Minneapolis’ Lowry station for nearly 24 years. She said that in many cases, such as the unrest of 2020, postal workers have brought hope to communities.

“We stood together. Now we have to have hope that we make it home safe at night,” she said.