Looters cash in on the rising price of metals

EUGENE — Thieves are looting cemeteries to profit from rising metal prices, grabbing sprinkler heads, brass flower urns and even a brass plaque pried from a tombstone, Eugene police said.

"This is what it's degenerated to, they're taking things from cemeteries," police Detective Bob Holland said. "Is nothing sacred?"

Police said this week that they noticed an upswing in metal thefts about six months ago, when the price of metal started to climb. Back then, thieves were sneaking into construction sites and pulling electric wiring from the walls.

The thieves soon targeted scrap yards, pillaging the copper, brass and aluminum bins at night and returning in the morning to sell what they had stolen.

Holland said metal thefts have soared this month as the looters turn brass, aluminum and copper into drug money. They have pulled hundreds of feet of wiring from bike paths and street lighting systems, a trend that has cost the city about $250,000 in damage and repairs, Holland said. The theft of 500 feet of copper lighting wire blacked out a stretch of the Fern Ridge Bike Path.

Thieves also are targeting utilities, cutting through fencing and stealing wire and other items from inside. Someone cut the grounds off a 510,000-volt transmission tower maintained by the federal Bonneville Power Administration in Goshen.

"One of these days we're going to hear a big pop and get the smell of burned hair," Holland said.

Insulated copper wire sells for 60 to 80 cents a pound at local scrap yards. Stripped of the insulation, it's worth about $3 a pound. Investigators have found mountains of stripped insulation at transient camps along the rivers and under freeway bridges.

No law forces recyclers to ensure that the metal they buy isn't stolen, but some have tried to screen for obviously stolen scrap, Holland said.

People convicted of stealing metal can face up to five years in prison, depending on the value of the metal, said Sgt. John King of the Springfield Police Department.

Holland said a man brought in the brass flower urns from a cemetery, telling recyclers he bought them "from some old guy." He returned with the brass plaque, but the scrap yard turned him away.

"When you think about people prowling a graveyard for scrap metal — there's just something wrong with that," Holland said.

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Information from: The Register-Guard, http:www.registerguard.com