Crime-Free Post Office Made Safer

WOODLAND HILLS — The U.S. post office here has never been robbed or been the scene of violence.

But the low-slung building near the Ventura Freeway has been fortified just in case.

An inch-thick wall of bulletproof glass separates the postal clerks from the patrons, and bulletproof cubicles, built like air-locks, allow clerks to take packages from customers without contact with them.

"I've never seen a post office like this," said Maria Vitocruz, 38, a legal secretary. "I guess society has changed a lot over the years."

While the safety measures are more common at post offices in central Los Angeles, postal officials said Woodland Hills is only the second Valley station to get the extra security, after Arleta.

Once intimidating mostly for its long lines and the grim faces pictured on FBI "Most Wanted" posters, the Woodland Hills post office is now trying to intimidate criminals.

While robberies of post offices are uncommon in the Valley, postal officials say that hasn't always been so. In 1994, nine San Fernando Valley post offices were held up--the North Hollywood station twice--by armed robbers, according to Pamela Prince, a postal inspector.

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But there are no plans to build bulletproof walls elsewhere in the Valley, Prince said.

Although the Woodland Hills post office has never been robbed, the postal service says its strategy is sound. Prince says that businesses around the Woodland Hills station have installed bulletproof glass, and the nearby Ventura Freeway provides would-be robbers a quick escape route.

Of the approximately 40,000 postal outlets in the U.S., "a very, very small amount have security measures," said Ricky Dodd, a spokesman for the U.S. Postal Service in Washington, D.C. "They're mainly in our inner cities, our urban areas.

"We put in heavy-duty security measures--the bulletproof walls--where we see a high crime rate or a repeated problem," he added. "There are exceptions, of course."

The decision to install bulletproof walls, security cameras, perimeter fences or additional parking lights around postal buildings is made at the local level, Dodd said. For security reasons, the postal service cannot divulge further information on post-office fortifications, he said.

"Robberies are very rare, but it does happen and when it does, we're concerned," he said. "We make a security assessment and proceed from there. I can't very well talk about the internal measures we take."