Edward Tuffy
Acting Lieutenant, U.S. Postal Inspection Service – Postal Police
to the US Postal Inspection Service/Postal Police
One day I was called to my boss’s office. Standing in the office along with my boss was the Inspector In Charge of the New York Division, Leroy Heath. Inspector Heath stated that they needed a supervisor for a temporary assignment to the Bronx and the volunteer was going to be me. On my second day in the Bronx, I walked out of my office and found a man on the sidewalk with three stab wounds to his chest and he was bleeding very badly. I tried to do what I could to stop the bleeding and told someone nearby to run across the street to the hospital and get assistance. The man kept telling me he was going to die and before an ambulance came he did. The NYPD arrived on the scene and I found out the man had attempted to rob someone and the person being robbed took the knife the man was using and stabbed him. He then ran to where I found him.
A few days later, on a Friday at about 4 PM I got a call from a Post Office that they had just been robbed. There had been several robberies of Post Officers in the past month. I responded to the Post Office with three Postal Police Officers and secured the scene and started to get information. I instructed two of the officers to check the area outside of the Post Office to see if anyone had seen anything. A person living down the block from the Post Office stated they observed a dark blue Lincoln race down the block and as it did so it sideswiped a parked car. Next to the car that was sideswiped a piece of molding from a car was found. This piece of molding was recovered and sent to our crime lab in Washington, DC. It was determined that the molding did come from a Lincoln. Believing that one of the robbers may have been a Postal Employee, a DMV check was made to see if an employee owned a Lincoln which was the same year and color of the vehicle in question. Turned out a Postal Truck Driver owned this type of vehicle. Going to his home, a check of his vehicle was made and found that the car was damaged and the molding found near the crime scene was missing from the car. The employee was taken in and questioned. He admitted he was part of the gang and gave up the names of his fellow robbers. For our work in ending this string of robberies myself and the officers who were with me received awards from the Inspector In Charge.
