Due to the rising price of commodities,  cities around the country are experiencing a dramatic increase in thefts of copper, copper piping and other materials commonly found in both commercial and residential properties. The primary target are typically vacant homes.

The following report from the Wall Street Journal, discusses the extent of this crime epidemic. Following the report are additional reports on the subject from other areas of the country.

Copper and Robbers:
Homeowners' Latest Worry

While Joe Fick and his wife Rachel Vreeman were sleeping in their rental house in Indianapolis one night in July, thieves sneaked up and made off with an estimated $100 of stolen goods. But the target wasn't jewelry or electronics. It was the copper components of the house's central air conditioner.

"They unscrewed the top and pulled out the guts and left the shell there," says Mr. Fick, a campus minister.

The high price of copper is hitting home -- literally. The metal's skyrocketing scrap value is inspiring criminals to hit houses, making off with copper coils in air-conditioning units, copper wires, even the copper pipes used for plumbing, leaving some perplexed residents without running water.

In the past several months, police departments across the country have reported a surge in the number of copper-related thefts at homes, businesses and elsewhere. Police have reported everything from copper vases swiped from gravesites to more serious thefts, such as the copper wire stolen recently from a power substation in Oklahoma City that utility officials say caused a six-hour power outage for 4,000 customers.

Sometimes thieves steal less than $100 worth of the metal but cause many times more in damages. Police in Detroit, for example, are reporting thousands of dollars in repair costs for street lights that have been stripped of copper components.

Driven by increased world demand for commodities, prices of steel, copper, aluminum and other metals are at historic highs. The price of copper has more than doubled in the past year, closing yesterday at $3.65 a pound on the Comex division of the New York Mercantile Exchange. The price of copper scrap -- which is processed and sold to metal-making firms -- has also doubled, with high-grade scrap now fetching around $3 or more per pound at scrapyards, and lower-grade scrap less, depending on quality, according to scrap-metal dealers.

Copper isn't the only metal sought by thieves. Products made from aluminum and steel are also being targeted -- everything from beer kegs to aluminum luggage carts. But thefts of copper -- which commands a higher price -- are especially onerous for homeowners and builders, as the metal is used throughout modern homes, including the inner coil of central air-conditioning units, electrical systems, gutters and water pipes.

Residential air-conditioning units in particular are becoming popular with thieves. The copper insides of a condensing unit -- the portion of a central-air system that sits outside -- can fetch $50 to $150 at a scrapyard, while replacing an entire unit that's been plundered can cost $2,000 or more. That's what happened with the unit that was gutted at Mr. Fick and Ms. Vreeman's rental home. The thieves probably "didn't even get the market value for it," says the house's owner, John Beeler. "I would have preferred if they had just knocked on my door and asked for $100."

Thieves often target units sitting unwatched at new construction sites or empty homes, but more brazen ones will strike even when residents are home. Noreen Alexander, a 62-year-old retired social worker, was in her Detroit home one hot morning this summer when she heard a strange noise out back. About 10 minutes later, her nephew noticed that the outdoor unit of her central air conditioner was gone. "I never believed anyone would steal an air conditioner that size, period," Ms. Alexander says. "Was I mad! I was hotter than the weather."

Police say the culprits are usually petty criminals looking for some quick money. Those who are arrested are charged with burglary or larceny, depending on the circumstances of the theft, and face fines, probation or several years in jail. People can be reimbursed through homeowner's insurance but often must pay a deductible. "The guy who used to collect beer cans for redemption values says, 'Why should I do that? I can get 10 times for that for a fraction of the work' " by stealing air conditioners, says Nathan Frankel, a scrapyard owner in Fontana, Calif.

Another target for thieves is copper piping, which often runs exposed beneath many older homes. Jared Barker, a 27-year-old corrections officer, was renovating his home in Huntington, W.Va., and left it unattended one night last month. He returned to find the kitchen tap not working. After checking below the house, he found that about a thousand dollars worth of copper pipe was gone. He was amazed that thieves would make off with the pipes in the roughly 10 hours he was away. "It takes a lot of guts to crawl underneath somebody's house and cut their pipes out," he says.

Police elsewhere in the country are reporting similar crimes. In Little Rock, Ark., one historic residence in the city's downtown was hit by copper thieves three separate times. In the most recent incident, thieves removed $1,000 worth of copper pipe, leaving the resident without water, according to police reports. Criminals in the city have also posed as servicemen, removing copper plumbing and air conditioners in the middle of the day, says Lt. Terry Hastings of the Little Rock police. He says the city has seen 39 commercial and residential air-conditioner thefts since mid-August, up from almost none in the same period last year.

In response to the rash of thefts, cities are starting to crack down. Montgomery, Ala., recently passed an ordinance requiring scrapyards to report the copper they take in to the police department, and police in Detroit are making sure local scrapyards are licensed and are collecting identification information from people who sell them the metal.

Chuck Carr, a spokesman for the Institute for Scrap Recycling Industries in Washington, an association of metal-recycling companies with about 3,000 scrap-yards throughout the U.S., says his organization is bewildered by the sudden surge in theft. The organization has a scrap-theft alert system, which alerts scrap dealers by email when large lots of metal are reported stolen. The group also has a grant to launch a minor advertising campaign to educate people the public on metal theft as part of National Crime Prevention Month.

"No legitimate scrap dealer wants to intentionally take stolen material," says Mr. Carr. "Not only is it the wrong thing to do; it's bad for business on so many levels."

All the activity is keeping air-conditioning contractors busy. Larry Taylor, president of AirRite Air Conditioning Co. in Fort Worth, Texas, says his company has received a service call nearly every day for the past 40 days from a home or business owner whose air conditioning has been damaged or stolen. Brenda Hawk, office manager for Camair Inc. in Orlando, Fla., says the company has gotten about four times as many telephone calls this summer compared with last year regarding stolen or gutted equipment.

One was from Krystian Zygowiec, who put his Orlando home on the market early in the summer and left for Michigan with his wife. About two weeks ago, a neighbor who was mowing the lawn noticed the air-conditioning unit on the side of the house had been reduced to just a few pieces. Because Mr. Zygowiec didn't want to bring prospective buyers to see a non-air-conditioned house, he had to cancel several open houses. "In this troubled housing market, every day is valuable," he says. "It was pretty much the worst time they could have stolen it."

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To view similar reports from other areas of the country, please click on the following links.

Lansing MI

Springfield OH (free registration required)

Cincinnati OH 

East St. Louis IL