Posted on 02/12/2013 7:27:10 PM PST by dennisw
Greece has been hit by an unprecedented wave of metal thefts as its recession-hit people turn to crime.
Train lines, bridges, cables and even cemeteries have all been targeted for scrap to feed a market driven by China and India.
Police now arrest an average of four metal thieves every day, compared to a few cases every month before the crisis started in late 2009. The profile of the metal thief is also changing, authorities say, from gypsies and immigrants living on the margins of society to mainstream Greeks who have fallen on hard times.
Roadside crash barriers, storm-drain covers, heavy factory doors, as well as mining equipment, irrigation machinery and even cemetery planters made of metal have all gone missing in and around Thessaloniki, the country's second largest city, amid concerns that previously law-abiding Greeks are turning to crime in growing numbers.
In northern Greece, rogue merchants have an additional advantage: An 800-mile border with four countries that makes it easier for them to dodge stepped-up police checks on local scrap yards.
Police near the frontier with Turkey last month arrested 18- and 19-year-old suspects accused for stripping nearly 1,000 feet of cable from street lights, blacking out a stretch of newly built road that runs across northern Greece.
Recent inspections also turned up more stolen cable on a passenger bus headed to Albania, along with a cache of candle holders, snatched from graveyards and loaded onto small trucks, that were stopped and searched at the Greek-Bulgarian border.
(Excerpt) Read more at express.co.uk ...
Our grim future.
How’s that socialism and equality working there?
Forward!
The Portuguese Communist Party publishes the weekly Avante! (Forward!)
Future? We’ve had an epidemic of metal bandits for the past few years.
These ‘metal’ crimes pass under the radar here. For now. My ‘Significant Otter’ works in construction. He says building sites, new housing divisions (few), etc. are locked down like never before because of this and he’s been in the biz 25+ years now.
Broken Window Theory says Greece should be Utopia
and Syria should be a superpower soon
It is happening here now. Down on their luck men are taking anything they can steal.
You mean our grim present. Copper thieves are rampant throughout Texas, breaking into abandoned homes or any abandoned building to strip copper, plumbing fixtures, and anything of value. It’s getting to be a problem.
heh heh She said ‘Significant Otter’ .
Gee. The ultimate end-point of socialism: society collapses.
*SNORT* It feels dumb to call someone your ‘Boyfriend’ when we’re both in our 50’s, LOL!
I guess ‘S.O.’ sounds dumb too, LOL!
What am I SUPPOSED to call him? I’ve never been in this particular situation before. *Scratches Head*
Starting to sound like they are not improving. lol.
They were better off when the military junta was running the country.
honey?
or the Korean variant “deng shin”
lol
I have heard the term “manfriend” being used. Cumbersome but accurate.
In a Mad Max economy people will be bartering with stolen bronze plaques....Greece is moving in this direction
And that though Wisconsin is a generally honest state. Boring honest sober population compared to many other parts of America. (maybe skip the sober)
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