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Posted on 04/14/2008 2:06:36 PM PDT by BGHater
Thieves are ransacking house after house in search of copper they can sell to scrap dealers for as much as $20,000 a month.
The gang descended on the house on Penn Avenue like carrion, ripping open wall board and gutting it of copper. They severed the pipes connected to the gas furnace and water heater, then hit the kitchen sink. Piles of lath lay at the foot of the stairs, the wall torn open to expose the upstairs bathroom.
By the time officer Richard Jackson knocked down the door, the gang was gone -- along with most of the home's copper.
Jackson, who's largely in charge of fighting the growing copper theft trade in Minneapolis' Fourth Precinct, stepped gingerly around piles of trash, beer bottles, fresh dog feces, dead mice and used condoms.
"Welcome to my world," he said.
Copper is the new underground currency. Its price has soared to more than $3 a pound, making it a worthwhile target of both novice scavengers and highly organized rings that hit several houses a day, pulling in as much as $20,000 a month. No longer just a nuisance, copper thieves are ransacking neighborhoods and often staying one step ahead of police.
It's an international problem with local repercussions. From the theft of large copper statues in England, to millions of dollars of missing copper in post-Katrina New Orleans, to a $300,000 copper heist from the irrigation system of an Arizona farm, the thieves have caused financial havoc.
In Minnesota, scavengers have dismembered a copper-coated Buddha, stolen statues from Theodore Wirth Park, snatched plates off of graves and stripped warehouses and construction sites of tens of thousands of dollars worth of the precious metal.
(Excerpt) Read more at startribune.com ...
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