Posted on 07/09/2024 5:48:25 PM PDT by E. Pluribus Unum
Across the country, copper and other valuable materials have been stolen from streetlights, statues and even gravesites, costing millions to repair.
The 6th Street Bridge in Los Angeles has been cast into darkness after its wiring was stolen.Credit...
The 6th Street Bridge in Los Angeles is wired to glow with colorful lights celebrating the city’s spirit. But the bridge, known as the “Ribbon of Light,” goes dark at night now. So do stretches of the busy 405 freeway and dozens of street blocks across the city.
In St. Paul, Minn., a man was recently hit by a car and killed while crossing a street near his home where streetlights had gone out.
And in Las Vegas and surrounding communities, more than 970,000 feet of electrical wiring, the equivalent of 184 miles, have gone missing from streetlights over the past two years.
The lights are going out across American cities, as a result of a brazen and opportunistic type of crime. Thieves have been stripping copper wire out of thousands of streetlights and selling it to scrap metal recyclers for cash. The wiring typically fetches only a few hundred dollars, but blacked-out lights pose safety hazards to drivers and pedestrians, and are costing cities millions to repair.
Metal theft has been an urban plague for decades, often rising alongside commodity prices. But the combination of the economic ills and social malaise lingering since the pandemic and soaring demand for metals, especially for copper, has brought this street crime to new levels.
Some theft involves elements of essential city infrastructure and even public artwork that once seemed immovable. Across Los Angeles County, more than 290 fire hydrants have gone missing since January.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Secession would work. Just the cities.
I love how the New York Times thinks they’ve uncovered a scoop or something.
At least the homeless are working and contributing to the economy... they have stolen the wires for the street lights 4 times by my shop, now they are strung along the top of the poles.
I took in a trunk load of copper and aluminium last Friday, got $300. Not bad. Stripped the wire while watching TV, easy money. Did not steal any of it, btw, just scrap.
I saw an article recently that theives have be taking LED lights and wire off of a major bridge.
How could that go unnoticed?
That would also take a lot of nerve (drug induced or natural) to climb up these massive cables on a suspension bridge.
The elves of Valinor scatter gems they trade from the dwarves across their beaches to make them look prettier, because they don’t know what else to do with them.
We have the monopoly for this county.
$1/pound
What the ****?
We have to pay a $3/pound federal tax.
I need to see and photograph your ID.
Smile for the camera!
For a moment I optimistically thought it was thieves strung along the top of poles.
and the NYT caused it by supporting and even starting narratives that got us where we are.
Now they put out an article - OMG look where we are. This country is starting to suck, How did this happen?
Must be white men with their transphobia or climate change.
Seems like another Democrat culture issue
BINGO!
All of the copper for EVs, EV chargers and the infrastructure to get the electricity to them has to come from somewhere.
Also all of the extra copper for heat pumps and mini splits.
The climate change cultists have no idea they have driven up the value of scrap copper so much that folks will strip cities and towns for it.
yes, 15 years ago i worked security at a truck trailer yard in the Hispanic area of Kansas city, Kansas due to the visitors stealing the wiring off of the trailers for 5 dollars worth of copper and the cost to be restrung was 400.00 per trailer.
This isn’t just part of increasing crime, this is very specifically a 3rd world style of crime.
two thieves in Santa Clara (CA) county were pretty brazen about their heist, driving down the line in broad daylight. 60-year-old Danielle Mayo and 55-year-old Frank Pacheco:
So, who’s buying this stuff?? Go after them, and voila, no more theft. Yes?
America is being rotted out precisely by followers of the leftwing ‘progressive’ ideological garbage the NYTimes has been spewing for nearly a century.
Illegal aliens. nyt won't say it.
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