Several years ago, in Florida some college students stole a stop sign to hang it in their dorm room. A driver was killed by a car that didn’t stop as the sign was gone. The students were hunted down and sent to prison for manslaughter. If someone is stealing traffic lights the same thing should apply. Hunt down and send to prison.
To deter copper theft in Florida you must submit your driver’s license to sell copper. More than one or two sales will earn you a visit. Only some businesses are allowed to recycle things like air-conditioners because they were so frequently stolen. When I took a bunch of copper in I took paperwork showing I was renovating a rental. I have been told by metals buyers that the incidence of stolen copper has fallen to undetectable levels. (Oh, undercover operatives will try to get buyers to buy obviously stolen copper. Publication of this had immediate positive effects.) When I take stuff in they look up my account and see how much I’ve brought in and over what period.
The reason we have crime at all is society allows it. When a black man where I worked was murdered and the family started making public accusations of racism the police had suspects in custody within hours by asking the cell tower operators to tell them which phones had been at the murder location between the night before and the probable murder time. They could, if they wanted, use a similar technique to solve probably eighty percent of crimes. But they don’t. They just take reports and compile statistics because the authorities don’t give a flying fart about protecting the public. Unless whatever happened is going to turn political.
Yep. Peasants murdering peasants is of little concern to The Crown.
I had a plumbing business and of course scrapped a lot of copper and brass, before California changed the laws I was at a scrap yard that had so much new or near new beautiful copper and brass products and wiring that parts of it resembled a material warehouse.
“The reason we have crime at all is society allows it.”
That’s what bothers me the most. We elect pols that allow it. The pols cave in to usually bogus claims of “police brutality” by minorities. Police are defunded. There is no southern border and the drugs flow in freely. People will do anything to get the money for their next fix. So the copper disappears and nobody is sent to jail.
Your explanation of how Florida solved the problem offers some hope, but we need tough pols and police like that all over the nation. Without that, complete collapse is coming.
Several years back I was driving through Fort Myers and I noticed that I was behind a pickup truck advertising AC condenser cage installation. Several blocks later I realized I had entered into his prime sales territory. Everyone of the small houses we passed had a steel enclosure around the AC condenser to prevent theft.