Posted on 05/27/2007 2:16:59 PM PDT by Diana in Wisconsin
(Scrap prices give metal allure, but electric site thefts can be deadly)
Thieves have always been stealing copper - or aluminum or steel, whatever commodity is fetching the highest price at a given moment.
They boost it from construction sites, from abandoned houses, from the backs of untended trucks, then sell it to scrap yards.
But the spike in copper prices in recent years has sent scofflaws to new heights.
Thieves are now stripping electric company substations and power poles across southeastern Wisconsin of their copper grounding wires, costing We Energies as much as $300,000 this year alone.
The utility is reluctant to give firm numbers but said "hundreds" of poles have been affected and the number of substations hit is "in the double digits."
"This has been escalating nationwide, and We Energies has seen a real surge in it the last couple of months," said Paul DeCoursin, the utility's manager of substation engineering and transmission support.
The trend is confounding utility officials and police, who are struggling to catch and prosecute offenders. More important, they say, the thieves may be endangering themselves and others.
"There have been instances of fatalities across the United States," said DeCoursin, referring to electrocutions of would-be thieves in several cities over the last 18 months. Last year, a Wisconsin man nearly died trying to cut the wires off a We Energies substation.
Particularly at those power stations, he said, interlopers "are risking a shock from high-voltage equipment" and endangering workers and passers-by who may not realize it's been tampered with.
The thefts affect other users of the poles as well, including telephone companies, which worry that any disruption in service can leave customers without access to 911.
The utilities are the latest victims of the volatile metals market, which in the 1980s had thieves stripping entire homes of their siding as aluminum prices soared.
Increased demand, particularly from China and India, has pushed prices on all metals to historic highs this decade. And as individual prices spike, thieves find ever more creative sources of revenue.
"A few years ago, it was steel," said Marty Foreman, who owns Foreman Metal Co. in Milwaukee and is the local president of the scrap recyclers association.
"People were stealing guardrails, manhole covers, sewer grates," he said. "Now it's copper."
The price for U.S. scrap copper hit $2.81 a pound on Friday, according to the Web site of Demolition Scrap Metal and Salvage News. That's down from around $3.80 earlier this month, but well above the 70 cents or so it commanded in May 2002.
"I don't have to look at the Dow to see what metal is peaking this week," said Milwaukee police Officer Leo Carter, one of two assigned to the department's property recovery unit and the point man for all things related to scrap metal thievery.
A glance at local police blotters will do. This month alone, 50 pounds of copper wire were taken from a construction trailer in Glendale; two businesses lost at least $3,000 in wire in Wauwatosa; and the jackpot: wire worth $40,000 was stolen from a We Energies storage container in Racine County.
Even the dead and the righteous have been wronged. Churches have been plundered for their copper downspouts and cemeteries their bronze vases.
"We arrested a guy last week who was going around taking the brass fireplugs off of buildings," Carter said. "When we caught him, he had a backpack full of the things. It must have weighed 200 pounds."
Some items are unique enough to be traced to their original owners, making prosecution easier. But the uniformity of copper wire - it looks the same whether it comes off of a power pole or a construction trailer - makes that more difficult.
A recent case out of West Allis illustrates the conundrum. Michael Verville, 44, of Milwaukee was arrested this month after police confiscated his van containing sections of grounding wire, pole-climbing spikes and cable cutters.
But police had to settle for a burglary charge - Verville is accused of stealing a bicycle out of a West Allis garage while being chased on foot - because they couldn't link the cable in the van to a particular theft.
"It's very frustrating," West Allis police Capt. Jerry Ponzi said. "You have to either catch them in the act or be able to tie them to a specific site and victim."
Carter, who has spent the last two months working exclusively on scrap metal cases, partly blamed some of the scrap dealers themselves, who he said knowingly buy stolen metal.
"If they didn't have any place to sell this stuff, they wouldn't steal it," he said of the thieves.
Foreman acknowledged that element but said it is the minority. He said reputable recyclers and his association, the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries, are advocating legislation in Wisconsin and elsewhere that would improve police ability to monitor scrap transactions and deter theft.
"Those of us who are legit are sick and tired of being associated with those who are not," he said.
Little did I know that it will now pay off the mortgage on my house, LOL!
I’m glad that they’ve finally invented a crime that is self-executing.
LOL!
They are stealing copper like crazy here in Vegas.
Save your pennies kids, they are worth more than 1 cent.
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"If they didn't have any place to sell this stuff, they wouldn't steal it," he said of the thieves.Kinda like illegal immigration; fix Mexico and there's no reason (well, a reduced reason maybe) to come here ...
Where I live in LA. you have to have a picture I.D. to recycle anything now. Just started this year.
Only the ones minted 1982 and before. After that, the ‘copper penny’ is almost all zinc, with a (very) thin electroplate of copper on the surface.
Even the zinc pennies are worth more than one cent these days.
Thieves have even been targeting breweries for their empty aluminum kegs.
At least the thieves can get fried stealing copper from substations. What really frosts me is the dopers that steal our nation’s bronze war memorials. That should be a capital offense.
Someone stole the large brass Texas emblem off the State’s marble monument at the south end of Farwell, Texas but then again they stole my brass eagle off my American flag during 9-11. Watch your monuments and flags!
There’s a guy in Houston that runs TV commercials, paying cash for your scrap metal.
Precise figures on request, of course.
Also, aluminum is not zinc. Comparisons between the two are in fact rather stupid.
BTW, if you want to be an aluminum ''thief'' as it were, you are far better off targeting foil manufacturers than breweries.
As far as that goes, you're far better off salvaging gold from old computers (the circuit boards, dontchaknow). All it takes is a file and a bit of patience -- how easy, and no theft involved.
www.coinflation.com
Canadian coins do even better
1955 - 1981 Nickel
metal value $0.2224582 (US)
An excellent summary. Thanks, and FReegards!
Perhaps special wire could be manufactured for the utilities that would make it easily identifiable as such, by means of stranding pattern or embedded cores of other metals. Such wire could only be accepted for recycle if presented by an authorized utility agent.
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