Pickup trucks loaded down with stolen metal are becoming commonplace at area scrap yards,
as thieves swipe copper, brass and precious metals to sell for quick cash.
--------------
When James Sharrow and Chad Guild pulled up to Rivergate Metals in North Portland on March 13 to sell more than 50 pounds of brass lying in the bed of a truck, the crew at the scrap metal yard had no particular reason to be suspicious.
The pair wore hard hats and safety vests, and drove a full-size Ford F-350 truck with decals from an excavating company in Vancouver, Wash. Their story — that the brass was left over from a job site — sounded plausible.
Over the next two weeks, Sharrow, 47, and Guild, 31, returned to Rivergate on nine occasions, hauling in nearly one and a half tons of brass.
Finally, on March 28, workers at Rivergate turned the pair away after receiving a tip from the Portland Police Bureau that a band of metal thieves had found a lucrative new target: fire department connections (FDCs), the chunky brass fittings used by firefighters to connect their hoses to the internal sprinkler systems of commercial buildings.
<snip>
It’s difficult to assess the damage caused by the thefts, but Malanaphy reckons that $30,000 would be a lowball estimate — and it doesn’t take into account the possibility that a missing FDC could cripple firefighters in the event of a blaze.
The pair’s profit from reselling the brass? About $3,000.
Welcome to the dark side of recycling. For years, the mantra of sustainable waste management has been, reduce, reuse, recycle. Now, light-fingered opportunists have come up with a new twist on the old slogan: Remove, resell, repeat.
“They steal the wires out of message boards, light poles, and pretty much anything that isn’t bolted down,” says Oregon Department of Transportation spokeswoman Christine Miles. “Five years ago it (metal theft) wasn’t even on our radar, but since this time last year we’ve easily spent over half a million dollars on it.”
More:
http://www.portlandtribune.com/sustainable/story.php?story_id=121078389499281700