From the sound of it meth users are the culprits. Around here any metal is stolen for money to buy meth. The court system isn't harsh enough on the criminals IMHO
The roundhouse in Victoria is about the only place I can think of. Wellcox is out in the open. From the Nanaimo Daily News
A similar situation occured in Portland oregon when metal thieves broke into the roundhouse where SP 4449 SP&S 700 and other locomotives are stored or being rebuilt. The thieves stole all the copper wire cables and other wires for the PA-1 as well as most of the brass they could find. Nobody has been caught and the cost of the stolen metal was about $30000.
Crime pays. Simple as that. Perhaps it's time to revive actually assigning punishment for crime. We're way to soft these days. If nothing else, they could establish severe penalties for those who buy this purloined metal, pretending it's just innocent scrap. Boxcab E50
A great and noble thing to say, but tell me, how is a scap yard operator supposed to know where the metal comes from? How is he supposed to be able to know the difference between a traction motor lead and a piece of scrap electrical wire that was found on the side of the road? Before you go deamonizing all scrap dealers as evil people who knowingly buy stolen scrap, why don't you go and ask one of them what their policies are. I deal with a major scrap company on a daily basis. First, they're just trying to make a living like everyone else out here. Every time they restrict what they take, they risk not making ends meet that week, especially for these bigger yards that have quotas to meet for corporate. They mark everything they receive and they try to make sure they're not just taking anything (most of them won't take scrap from walk-ups for example), but they have to balance that against the small contractor or home handyman who brings in his old A/C unit for scrap after installing his new one and letting them sell their legal scrap against a bunch of hooligans that went and stole an A/C from a Church down the street. How do you prove that it's definitely the stolen A/C unit? You're right that the punishment by-and-large is a slap on the wrist for things like this, but at the same time, you don't kill an entire industry (and a necessary one at that) just because you can't enforce the existing theft laws either.
Don't know about an entire A/C unit, when all that is needed is the copper core. Smart thieves (yes, I know, an oxymoron, but work with me here) only desire the copper cores- that, and as much wire as they can find, be it from houses, commercial buildings, or diesel shops. IIRC, there is legislation afoot in Texas to require photo ID from everyone turning in more than a certain amount of copper to scrapyards. Penalties aboud for those scrap dealers who fail to ask for ID (and I'm aware that dishonest dealers are in the slim minority- I have friends in western Colorado that run a successful salvage yard).
In AZ, they copy your ID and photograph you next to your stack of metal, anything over $20 I believe.
CMC Recycling does 2 things (voluntarily) in DFW - photo ID's and all of their scrap shipped out has ultraviolet dye put on it. This is because some of their gons get vandalized and people try to bring the metal back to the yard. All of the local yards know to look for such scrap and DART Police took several dozen people to jail for theft of property a few weeks ago when a car was accidentally left by the railroad near a location were people could back their trucks up to the side of the car and start unloading. On one hand, you get a bunch of crooks in jail, but on the other, almost 24 tons of scrap dissappeared from those gons in 48 hours.
Freight service is getting back to normal. SRY GP9 124 and SRY GP7 129 arrived at Nanaimo last Wednesday. http://forums.railfan.net/forums.cgi?board=Vancouver;action=display;num=1214488053
It Happened to BCIT Too. I went to school at B.C.I.T. in August and found out that copper thieves had gotten in to the schools donated C.N. GP9 (Loco# 4019) and cut almost every cable in the thing looking and finding copper wire. They even broke into the cab and cut every wire in the control stand to try to find the elusive copper. So basically the schools learning tool was disabled and not getting fixed anytime soon due to 2 things. 1. it's the second time it's happened and 2. due to the lack of security and no place to house it fixing it would be like inviting the thieves to come and steal some more. It's quite sad really that the government is letting these copper dealers stay in business even though they are making most their money of crooks and thieves by taking in stolen copper. sad
I read this post because it had been resurrected from the dead. The price of all precious metals has drastically declined due to China's demand for these products declining. China shut down all of it's foundries six months or so prior to the Olympics due to the air pollution. Now that the Olympics have passed, China has no need for our metals in the quantities seen in 2008. The price of IRON recently decreased about 300% in a months time. With all that said, I am in Law Enforcement and one of my specialized areas is metal theft cases. I have had metal yards call me and notify me of suspicious people. I have directed metal yards to buy material from known thieves and set it aside for me only to make a case against the criminals. The metal yards actually lose out by buying stolen material because we (Law Enforcement) recover it and give it back to the victims. Some of the victims have elected to pay the metal yards the scrap value of the material, but they are not required to. If your house gets broke into and all your jewelry is stolen, chances are it will end up at a pawn shop. In the event your property is located at a pawn shop, you are required to pay the hawk value to get your property back. That is not the case of the metal yards. California just passed an Assembly Bill addressing the problem which may or may not work. It makes more work for the legitimate scrappers, but does not necessarily make it easier to investigate and prosecute these cases. Anyway, I have not investigated a metal theft case of any kind since late October 2008. The crooks (meth users) have moved on to other things, like residential and commercial burglaries. The burglaries are easier to catch the crooks because the property is usually much more identifiable. Bottom line: the metal yards were not the bad guys during the metal crisis, the bad guys were the bad guys.
