Posted on 07/13/2011 9:17:44 AM PDT by george76
PENN VALLEY, Pa. – A rash of copper thefts in Montgomery county has residents on alert.
They may not seem like your typical targets, but thieves in Montgomery County are looking for copper. Gutters and downspouts made of the precious metal are being stolen from people’s homes along the Main Line.
Lower Merion Township Police have reported a significant increase in the thefts of copper downspouts and gutters being taken from homes throughout the area.
(Excerpt) Read more at philadelphia.cbslocal.com ...
Another indicator of the expanding obama economy.
I can’t imagine that copper gutters are cheap to replace.
At some point in the recycle supply chain there’s a party who has assets to lose.
All law enforcement has to do is find them and start investigating. Once the cash dries up the vandalism will stop.
I have aluminum gutters. Thieves won't go to all the work involved in stealing them, with aluminum going for less than a dollar a pound.
And I bet that though they may not be as pretty as copper, they work just as well.
As a teenager in the late 60s, I worked for a guy who took us to a large estate type home in Northwest DC. I never saw the owners. One of the things he had us do was take the copper gutters and downspouts off the house. I’ve wondered in the years since whether he was supposed to be doing that or not. He was a sort of “handyman/landscaper” guy and he was paying us cash. I now suspect we were just the dumbell labor who had no clue what it was we were helping him do.
Is this crime worth all the effort? Copper is $4.36 a pound. 100 pounds gets you $436, if you can sell it for that price. Big deal. These people would be better off flipping burgers (for Moochelle).
More fallout from the Federal Reserves “Quantitative Easing” (i.e. printing money)... Print money. Devalue money. Increase value of real assets, such as copper. Price of copper goes up.
Seems like this should narrow down the suspects!
Attach a live wire to each gutter; wet the ground around the foundation thoroughly. Remove corpses daily; repeat as needed.
You wouldnt know anything about this topic would you?
Yep. Copper theft has been a big problem in the gutter trade for a very long time. Nothing new there.
I once replaced all of the downspouts for a big church in Los Angeles, who had been ripped off by copper thieves. We put back brown enameled steel downspouts to replace the copper ones.
At the time, I couldn't believe that someone would be low enough to steal from a church, but they did.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.