Copper and robbers
Turning copper into cash
by Cheryl Keffer
news@timesheraldnews.com
There are legitimate scrappers out there. Contractors who use part of a roll of copper tubing. Electricians rewiring an old house. Even the people who rummage in dumpsters looking for trash that can be recycled aren’t doing anything illegal – if the trash bins are on the street, anyway. Private property is another issue.
But in recent months the number of thefts of copper tubing and wiring – and even old copper gutters – has increased enough that Chris Casey, an officer at the White Marsh Precinct of the Baltimore County Police, has been labeled the “copper cop” by his commander, Capt. Mike Balog.
Part of a crew of officers on specialized business patrol, Casey has been on the copper beat since the summertime and has compiled folders full of information on copper thefts in the area.
Scavenge theft is a nationwide problem, Balog said.
Because the price of copper has skyrocketed, Casey added.
A chart on demolitionscrapmetalnews.com shows that at the end of 2003 the market for copper was less than $1 per pound, but by mid-2006 was spiking at nearly $4 per pound. At the beginning of 2007 it dropped to $2.50, but quickly jumped to $3.50 and has hovered there since.
Prices vary across the United States, but scrap metal industry reports show that last year the average was $3.22 per pound.
That’s the average price throughout the market, though, not necessarily what Joe Blow off the street (from northeast Baltimore County) gets for his scrap.
During Casey’s investigations, one such average Joe earned $1.75 per pound for old copper gutters and downspouts sold to a local recycler in October and November.
Turns out those gutters were among the ones that had been stolen from three houses in the Fullerton area from mid-October to late November.
The Essex resident has since been charged with three counts each of petty theft and fourth-degree burglary. The burglary charges were added because he allegedly trespassed to obtain the gutters.
In that case, police were assisted by the recycling company that purchased the stolen goods.
“A lot of shops don’t really care,” Casey said, but both nearby recyclers – Maryland Recycle and Integrity Recycling – voluntarily collect contact information for everyone who sells there, according to Casey.
With information on the suspect, officers were able to interview him and eventually obtain a confession. With that, and the recycler’s invoice dates coinciding with the dates of the theft, county police have a pretty good case, Casey said.
Arrests made late last year also allowed police to clear many of the copper thefts from houses under construction.
“Three people were responsible for 85 percent of White Marsh’s problems,” Casey said.
The three suspects are probably responsible for other thefts that couldn’t be proven, he said.
The trouble with copper and other thefts of materials is that none of it has a serial number, Casey said. So the crimes are harder to prove.
Take the case of a bonfire that caused alarm up Philadelphia Road near the Harford County line – thick, black smoke produced by a man burning a barrelful of electrical wire in order to get the rubber coating off the copper core, according to Casey.
“It’s up to us to prove it was stolen property,” he said.
As the quality and integrity of the copper increases, so does its value.
There’s an industry standard for recyclers: older copper gutters – often replaced with aluminum gutters when the copper begins to corrode – are classified as “light copper,” while “heavy copper” includes clean copper tubing like what’s being taken from houses under construction. The market price for light copper held steady at the beginning of the month ($2.55), while the price for heavy copper crept upward from $2.75 at the end of 2007 to $2.85 as of January 14.
The tubing is practically new and goes for more than the old gutters. An invoice showed that one person selling copper visited a recycler a total of 32 times, each time being paid up to $125 in cash. On one day in particular, that person stopped in four times and was paid $57.60, $32.40, $26.50, and $118.80, for a total of $235.30.
And so fairly regularly over the past six months, such copper theft has shown up in the local papers’ crime blotters. The victims in those cases tend to be developers or contractors since ownership usually isn’t taken until construction is complete, Casey said.
Thieves will go into a house under construction and steal wiring that has just been installed, Casey said. One recent incident, in the 9000 block of Franklin Square Drive, involved the weekend break-in of a storage locker and $4,400 worth of copper.
During two months this summer Casey and his partner patrolled new developments overnight “trying to catch them breaking into houses,” he said. But other than a couple of dumpster divers, they didn’t see anyone. “We’re doing as much as we (can) short of being (the developers’) own private security.”
Officers have encouraged developers to hire security and neighbors to be on the lookout for anything suspicious. “Usually homeowners know who the normal contractors are,” Casey said.
“If it’s after midnight, just call (911).”
Re-reselling
Local recyclers often cooperate with theft investigations, according to Ofc. Chris Casey. Especially when the same people who are nabbing copper materials from houses under construction turn around and break into the recycling company they sold the goods to.
K-9 Ofc. Dave Roesler was given a commander’s award January 8 for his stakeout of Maryland Recycling in Rosedale. The reseller had been broken into three times in a two-week period in December, said Casey.
Roesler, on patrol overnight, tapped into the company’s security camera feeds and watched as the same truck pulled up to the business two nights in a row – the suspects were arrested the second night, since Roesler was parked only about a half-mile away. And he was watching them on the Internet.