Crime-fighting postal inspector transferred out of V.I.

After almost five years working with local and federal law enforcement agencies in the territory, the U.S. Postal Inspector assigned to the Virgin Islands will be departing, leaving a hole that local law enforcement says need to be filled.

Postal Inspector Steve Stebbins is the longest-serving postal inspector assigned solely to the Virgin Islands - his predecessor being the only other postal inspector with such a distinction.

After seven years with a postal inspector assigned to and working out of the Virgin Islands, the U.S. Postal Inspection Service still has not decided whether another postal inspector will replace Stebbins. Local law enforcement officials are eagerly awaiting word on the matter.

"It will be important for us to get a replacement for him - to get an enforcement presence from the U.S. Postal Service," said V.I. Police Commissioner Novelle Francis Jr. "I certainly hate to see Steve go."

Stebbins is one of about 1,500 postal inspectors nationwide, according to the Postal Inspection Service. Inspectors work closely with U.S. attorneys, other law enforcement agencies and local prosecutors to investigate postal cases and prepare them for court - enforcing more than 200 federal laws covering crimes that affect or fraudulently use the U.S. mail.

In the territory, that has included major mail fraud, anthrax threats and identity theft.

"And the bread and butter down here would have to be the illegal shipment of narcotics and firearms," Stebbins said.

Francis said he is most concerned about the federal presence in this area, saying that Stebbins has worked closely with the Police Department to stem the flow of illegal guns and drugs that enter the territory.

"A lot of those laws are federal jurisdictional laws," he said. "But he is instrumental in postal investigation."

"Prior to his arrival, I think we had an agent assigned, but he was stationed in Puerto Rico," Francis said.

Uncertainty about whether Stebbins will be replaced looms, as the Postal Inspection Service has yet to decide what to do about the Virgin Islands.

"A decision has not been made at this time whether they're going to replace him or not," said David Arias, a Postal Inspection Service spokesman. The service is considering a number of options, he said - a full-time replacement, temporary replacements, shorter inspector rotations or working an inspector out of Puerto Rico like before.

"There's various options on the table, but we want to ensure you that that area will be covered," Arias said. "Appropriate attention will still be given."

Part of the reason there may not be a replacement is because of numbers, Stebbins said. With 1,500 postal inspectors in a country of more than 300 million people, the Virgin Islands has a population about half the number of people needed to have its own inspector, if inspectors were to be assigned based on demographics.

Still, Stebbins said, the per capita usage of the U.S. mail in the territory is much higher than elsewhere - a potential result of the islands' isolation.

When considering the amount of mail crimes in the territory, "it's not that there's a greater percentage of them down here," Stebbins said. "The difference is there's just a lot more mail being used down here."

His work has spanned government corruption, major mail fraud and the trafficking of firearms and narcotics.

Stebbins' first big case was a multi-agency investigation into frauds and conspiracies involving former V.I. Department of Planning and Natural Resources Commissioner Dean Plaskett, former V.I. Property and Procurement Commissioner Marc Biggs and businessman Leroy Marchena, he said. The investigation came about after The Daily News' investigative report "Contracts and Cronies," which identified and detailed the underlying corruption in contracts that the V.I. government awarded to a number of businesses.

The federal investigation resulted in an indictment by a federal grand jury in 2007. A year later, Plaskett and Biggs were convicted of bribery, while Marchena was found not guilty on the charges against him.

Stebbins also worked as part of the Public Corruption Task Force, which was responsible for the arrests and cases against a number of former police officers - including George Greene Jr. and Enrique Saldana, who both were convicted last year in District Court of extortion charges.

As the postal inspector, Stebbins said he relies heavily on information-gathering and inspectors work in tight communication with each other.

"Because we're a national agency, a lot of our tips, for me, actually come from another postal inspector somewhere else in the nation," he said.

"You have a sender and a receiver," Stebbins said. "It's a two-way street. There's a bad guy on each end."

Stebbins said that the Postal Inspection Service's San Juan office does a lot of collaborative work with him and that they would continue.

Francis said he will encourage continued collaboration.

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