Wednesday, April 25, 2007
They caught "the Bishop": "Going postal" in real life
An arrest has been made in "the Bishop" corporate terrorism case. I don't mean to pick on the United States Postal Service, but it is disturbing that this news isn't the least bit surprising:
Authorities arrested an Iowa machinist Wednesday who they say sent pipe bombs to two investment firms in an effort to drive up stock prices in two small companies he had invested in. Authorities said the bombs, which would have been live had a single wire been connected, came with threatening letters signed "The Bishop."
John P. Tomkins, 42, a former part-time postal carrier from Dubuque, Iowa, was arrested on his way to work, and federal agents began searching his home and a storage facility, according to the U.S. attorney's office in Chicago.
Far be it from me, a devoted civil libertarian, to suggest that law enforcement officials hunting for suspected lunatics routinely begin by sorting through the personnel records of the USPS.
10 Comments:
By 
Assistant Village Idiot, at
Wed Apr 25, 08:58:00 PM:
Well, you can compare the general psychological profile of middle-aged males who work for the USPS with their equivalent numbers at UPS and Federal Express and see what's slipping through...
By Pax Federatica, at
Wed Apr 25, 09:05:00 PM:
This is quite similar (albeit on a much smaller scale) to what the villain Le Chiffre does during the first half of Casino Royale. (In that case, he short-sells stock in an aviation company, then orchestrates a failed attack on that company's prototype aircraft.)
By Pax Federatica, at
Wed Apr 25, 09:09:00 PM:
To clarify things, I am referring to last year's movie Casino Royale, not Sir Ian Fleming's original novel.
By Fire, at
Wed Apr 25, 11:09:00 PM:
TH - I'm surprised you haven't received any flame mails from "disgruntled" postal readers of your blog.
Wow
By D.E. Cloutier, at
Thu Apr 26, 12:19:00 AM:
At times you do seem to like to stereotype people, TH. I guess it's a New Jersey thing.
By 
, at
Thu Apr 26, 12:55:00 AM:
Just think of how long it took you to get mail back during the days before we had motorized trucks HEY IM SENDING MY CHRISTMAS CARDS IN SEPTEMBER THEY WILL GET THERE BY CHRISTMAS
By TigerHawk, at
Thu Apr 26, 06:43:00 AM:
DEC,
Well, everybody stereotypes. The question is whether it is invidious. Marines believe in duty, honor, God and country. Oops, I did it again.
I suppose my view is that since one's employment is entirely mutable at the option of the employee, such stereotypes can't be invidious even when they are negative (as in "going postal," a widely-accepted, even if grossly unfair, stereotype).
BTW, You must have missed my occasional references to DOUGs. It is a term used inside recently deregulated power companies. The new employees, hired into the competitive parts of the business, tend to be entirely different from the long-standing guys who have worked in the public utility environment for their entire careers. The new guys refer to the old guys as Dumb Old Utility Guys, as in "seeing as how Bill's a DOUG, don't expect to catch him in the office a minute after 5".
Guilty as charged.
By , at
Thu Apr 26, 09:15:00 AM:
TH -
My father-in-law is a retired mail carrier, and he's a pretty normal guy, though he's been known to get pretty upset watching U of M in the Rose Bowl.
TIGOBLUE
By Georg Felis, at
Thu Apr 26, 04:08:00 PM:
Yep, but a lot of those DOUG's leve at 5 because they are *done* with their work, instead of just getting started like all the young pups. Used to have a plummer like that, he only made one trip to the truck and never had to return to fix leftover leaks.
By , at
Thu Apr 26, 09:18:00 PM:
The postal service hires about 600,000 people. That's more than the active duty Army. In any crowd of people that large, you're going to have a significant number of nutcases.
Especially since the Army provides at least some level of psych screening on its employees (since I hazard to guess that soldiers don't want loons carrying automatic weapons behind them) that the Postal Service probably doesn't provide.
