In the dark? Here’s why
Wednesday, December 5th, 2007
You can always count on LA to provide you with a never-ending stream of weird news. The latest item is about crafty thieves posing as maintenance workers who steal copper wiring from public street lights. This may sound bizarre to you, but have you ever taken your recycling into an actual recycling plant? They not only take plastic, paper, and glass, but scrap metal such as steel and copper, and other construction-grade material.
Also, the price of precious metals has gone up significantly in the past year. I have a friend who is a jeweler, and while her business is still small (her jeweler’s bench is in her bedroom, and she has three other jobs to support her art), she is still hurt badly by the rising price of gold, which has more than doubled, steel, and copper. Moreover, when you buy over a few ounces of a precious metal, you have to fill out government paperwork so they can keep track of how much you buy to be sure that you’re not hoarding. And with the rate of the dollar these days, I can’t really blame anyone for wanting to hoard.
The easy way around that is to steal! You get enough copper scraps to turn in and get a pretty sum of cash, and there’s no trail leading back to you. The downside? People are left in the dark for months, making it very dangerous at night for pedestrians, cyclists, and even drivers. This wire theft has been growing in popularity, and is now affecting not only LA but San Bernadino, Redlands, San Francisco, and Pasadena. It might not be a bad idea to take down the license plate of a plain white truck or work van you see when the worker is up a pole fiddling with the lights and call it in to the nearest DWP, just to be sure nothing fishy is up. It may save a life.
To read more about these strange thefts, go here.
