Mail at risk after key theft

If you live in a Kelowna apartment building with a V1Y postal prefix your building was left vulnerable to thieves for several weeks.

Photo: Jennifer Zielinski - Castanet

Several dozen apartment buildings in Kelowna were recently compromised after keys which open those apartment buildings were stolen. All of the locks have now been changed.

This all stems from an incident back on Friday, Sept 12 when a mail bag and a set of postal keys were stolen in an area near High Road and Glenmore Drive.

The keys in question opened several street level relay boxes and several dozen apartment buildings.

The delay in replacing the affected locks resulted in mail thefts from three relay boxes the Monday after the initial theft.

It also left an undetermined number of apartment buildings vulnerable while Canada Post scrambled to find enough locks to replace those that were compromised.

Canada Post spokesperson, Anick Losier, was not able to explain why it took three days to replace the locks on the relay boxes.

"What I can tell you is that it was identified that the keys had been stolen...we do have a process in place in which we started to do the change of the locks," says Losier.

"Since it happened on a Friday we did start the change on Monday afternoon and Tuesday and by then some of the relay boxes had already been compromised."

Losier was unable to say why the locks in question were not changed over the weekend or why extra security measures were not taken to protect mail that was unsecured.

She did say locks to all 61 relay boxes in the city were changed.

As for the apartments left vulnerable for several weeks, Losier says the delay was with ordering the locks. She says Canada Post did not have enough inventory to handle the large replacement.

Canada Post also did not inform the apartment managers or the tenants of those apartments their security had been compromised.

"When we made the decision to order the locks and leave it be...it was because we had assurances from local authorities and from our postal inspectors...we didn't take a chance...we knew the people who stole the keys were not aware of the potential to open those locks. We were very confident of what we were doing. It just took longer than what we would have wished. Certainly we did not want to put anybody's safety or security at risk, but we were very much confident about this very fact."

Photo: Jennifer Zielinski - Castanet File Photo

This street level relay box was one of three broken into after a letter carrier's keys were stolen three days previous.

Losier says replacement of the exterior locks was completed a few weeks ago while the mail panels were complete late last week.

Canada Post would not say how many apartment buildings had been compromised except that it affected all buildings within the V1Y postal prefix.

According to Canada Post's website, that works out to 6,412 apartment units.

Losier admits the month long delay in getting the locks changed is an embarrassment to the corporation.

She says Canada Post has implemented a program in which it will require every area to have extra locks and keys in case of an emergency such as this.

"In this case we should have had more locks readily available and that is one of the things we have learned from this experience," says Losier.

"We are going to rectify this.

As for the original theft Castanet has learned the letter carrier placed his bag down and continued along his route, giving the thieves an opportunity to steal the bag.

While Losier would only say what internal disciplinary measures have been taken, Castanet has learned the letter carrier did receive a suspension and 18 months probation.

"We have reinforced the message with our employees in the area and across the country about the importance of the job we do. Unfortunately we do see things where there are bad people who are trying to put our employees safety at risk to get to some of these keys."

Castanet News was made aware of this situation several weeks ago but, in an effort to protect those people within the compromised apartment buildings, elected to sit on the story until those buildings had been deemed secure.