Not sure why the thugs bother, well they are dumb thugs. That amount of theft / vandalism IF CAUGHT probably lands them in jail for a few months as it will be in the neighborhood of $30,000 to repair. Even if they get away with it how much copper could there be and worth how much? This is Oakland, thugs can walk into any store and take what they want as long as it doesn’t exceed $500 and get a slap on the wrist if anything.
Lets say each cable has 10 lbs of copper at ~$4 /lb. If the thieves steel 10 cables, that is $400 at best. I suspect they would only get half of that. As you mention, the repairs are likely to cost 10's of thousands of dollars. I think what is more likely to happen is the equipment will just be removed and somebody will have to eat the installation, removal and repair costs.
“probably lands them in jail for a few months”
You are living in the past. Cops won’t bother with this low level stuff.