Neighborhoods across the country are falling dangerously dark overnight as cities struggle with a staggering increase in the theft of copper wire from utility poles and streetlights.
Thieves are reselling the increasingly valuable copper wire for cash.
“This is a really challenging thing to deal with because it’s not a traditional form of crime that most people understand,” said Ben Stickle, a former police officer and a criminologist at Middle Tennessee State University specializing in metal thefts.
Mr. Stickle said copper theft is a growing national problem fueled by the black market, and most police departments are unsure how to tackle the crime.
“We have an idea in law enforcement as to say, ‘Hey, this is what shoplifting is. This is how it works. I find the goods, give them back to the store and take the person to jail,’” he said, “It’s a little bit more challenging for the theft of metals because, again, you just have to have some basic knowledge of what’s going on.”
The price of the heavy metal, an essential component in computers, phones and other electronics, has skyrocketed from 61 cents a pound in October 2001 to almost $5 a pound this month.
Some more sophisticated crooks have caught police and local officials off guard. Last year, in the Bucks County suburbs of Philadelphia, the “Get Money Squad” pretended to be part of a search party looking for missing children during a flash flood. Meanwhile, it was lopping wires off utility poles.
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, now the Democratic vice presidential nominee, signed off on tighter regulations for copper sales in May after repair bills for streetlights skyrocketed in Minneapolis and St. Paul. Electric vehicle stations in Seattle have been knocked offline. In Louisville, Kentucky, motorists had little more than headlights to guide them along Interstate 71 and Interstate 64 exits this spring after thieves yanked wires out of 1,400 poles.
Frustrated officials in Oakland, California, gave up fixing one frequently-hit intersection and replaced overhead stoplights with stop signs.
No city has been hit harder than Los Angeles, where streetlights go dark faster than crews can repair them. Crosstown, a California news site, said more than 11,000 thefts had been reported in the first three months of the year.
Marc Burgos, who works in a shop in the city’s Pico Union neighborhood, told a KTLA reporter this summer that the missing streetlights have emboldened criminals. “It’s making it a little more dangerous. In fact, a month ago, I had a smash-and-grab. … It’s making it so dark that people are just able to do crimes,” he said.
The heavy metal task force, a special Los Angeles Police Department unit, arrested 82 people last month in connection with copper thefts.
Deputy Chief Michael Oreb said 60 of those arrested were charged with felonies and authorities seized nine guns.
City leaders created the unit this year after the Sixth Street Bridge near downtown was blacked out because of rampant copper theft.
LAPD officials say they may have turned the corner on the thefts.
“Today you see a clean alley, an alley that is free from debris,” Chief Oreb said during a recent press conference. “Not so long ago, this was a location of a wire-stripping group of individuals that would process the stolen wire from here and bring it to salvage yards to sell for pennies on the dollar.”
With a copper market at more than $4 per pound, thieves who abscond with hundreds of pounds from big targets such as substations can collect large sums of money.
Police said Alejandro DeJesus posed as a construction worker to steal nearly $100,000 worth of copper pipes from the Fontainebleau Las Vegas until his March arrest.
Mechanical companies told local NBC affiliate KSNV that the theft of copper and other stolen metals cost the luxury hotel about $200,000 in materials and $350,000 in labor.
Mr. Stickle, the metal theft expert, said criminals’ financial damage often dwarfs the money they earn from reselling copper.
Bandits sometimes tear into the walls of abandoned buildings, Mr. Stickle said, but most burglars are skilled tradesmen who know how to deftly pluck their desired metal from a source.
That’s a double-edged sword for scrapyards where criminals cash in on copper.
Mr. Stickle, who embedded himself with thieves while writing a book on metal theft, said he met an electrician who regularly traveled to a scrapyard.
The scrapyard required the electrician to show a letter from his employer stating that the copper wasn’t stolen. Six months later, he said, the same electrician was swiping copper and using his employer’s letter to sell the illicit goods.
Illinois and other states have tried to curtail metal theft by requiring scrapyards to copy a seller’s ID and take a photo to put on file. The new law in Minnesota requires resellers to have a license. Multiple states have also enacted laws that specifically penalize copper theft.
Many jurisdictions are focusing more on hardening their infrastructure.
That’s why the hand-hole cover offered by the aptly named End Metal Theft has been such a hit around Phoenix.
Co-founder Chad Ridenour said cities in Arizona have been seeking out his services over the past 18 months to protect public light fixtures from crooks.
Mr. Ridenour said the hand-hole cover requires a specialized key rather than a simple flathead screwdriver to unlock the panel.
“In 2010, I asked one of the cities here in Arizona, ‘What are you doing to prevent this [theft] from happening again? And they said, ‘We got nothing. What do you got?’” he said. “I couldn’t find anything, so I developed something that worked. As of a few months ago, they’re still in place, so 14 years later, they’re still holding.”
Mr. Ridenhour, an electrician by trade, said the company can fit the hand-hole cover on streetlights, stoplights and even stadium lights to protect the poles from crooks.
Mr. Stickle said the best way to hold burglars accountable is to be more diligent about tracking metal thefts.
The researcher said that having public and private companies tell police when and where metals are being plundered will allow law enforcement to start seeing patterns. Some watchdog groups have developed technology that alerts companies when their copper wire has been cut.
Still, Mr. Stickle said thieves seem to be one step ahead of authorities.
“The best thing you can do is prevent it, but that’s really hard as well,” he said.
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