Metal thieves converge on Patterson farms

California Farm Bureau Federation ^ | January 9, 2008 | By Christine Souza

[webheart]

I'm only guessing, but I'd guess that this is illegals doing the jobs Americans won't do, and Democrats helping them out in the legislature.

I'd guess you are wrong, and I'd be willing to bet that if any get caught, they are white and native-born. And furthermore, I'd bet they are tweakers. (I wonder if Wikipedia has an entry for tweakers.) They are just your average, illegal-drug-using, welfare-recieving, all-American tweakers. And the people helping them are the people that keep drugs illegal and expensive, so that tweakers, who have nothing but time, have to steal stuff to keep their habits supplied. Flame away, but I'm right.

[Bogtrotter52]

I live in Kingman AZ, a smallish city. It is getting more difficult for the local methheads to sell scrap metal here. I.D. requirements, signatures, adresses of sellers, etc. Who buys the stuff? Dealers who know exactly where it comes from and just don’t give a damn.

[Cicero]

Yes, could be. The only time I've previously heard of such widescale theft of copper was in the South Bronx during its darkest period, which coincided with an earlier commodity supercycle, when thieves went in to abandoned houses, or sometimes lived-in houses, and ripped out all the copper pipes, leaving the water spewing all over the place.

Most of the thieves were probably black, because nobody who wasn't black would have dared show his face in the South Bronx in those days. But the common element was that they were drug users who needed to support their habit.

[woollyone]

house down the street...
I was walking my dog one evening and smelled something burning. It was summer, so certainly wasn’t a fireplace.

I asked a neighbor who was in his front yard if he also smelled something burning, to which he replied; “yeah, they cook their dinner over an outside fire these past few nights”.

Turns out a vacant house (IIRC it was a foreclosure) had some squatters move in. They sold every appliance, then stripped off the gutters, all the wiring, the entire A/C system, including ducts, the screen doors...everything of value and sold it for scrap metal and the open fire was being fueled by wood from cabinets and studs removed from inside the house.

And I do NOT live in a bad neighborhood!

Welcome to our future.

[Anti-Bubba182]

"Welcome to our future."

If the cops don't arrest and the DAs don't prosecute, that is our future. The problem is that if enough people break a particular law eventually it is treated as civil disobedience and not a crime wave.