10/21/2007

By DAVID CLOUSTON

Salina Journal

When thieves this month boldly hitched their pickup to a trailer stacked with more than $26,300 worth of shiny new copper pipe and drove it away from Salina Supply, they might have tried their luck at selling it later for scrap next door at Salina Iron & Metal Co.

The thieves sawed the 20-foot-long pipes into shorter pieces to make them appear to be leftover junk. Even so, Salina Iron & Metal Co. president and owner Bob Butts, 312 N. Fifth, says his employees would not have been fooled.

"People who steal something of significance here in town, they're not going to bring it to us, because they're going to get caught," Butts said.

Scrap metal prices have come down from their all-time highs this summer, but they're still high enough worldwide to drive illicit treasure seekers into criminal and unsafe acts.

Earlier this month, a thief in Germany was charred beyond recognition by a 10,000 volt electric shock when he tried to steal a live copper cable. Police in Duisburg, Germany, found the 32-year-old man's blackened remains laying by a set of cable cutters and a pile of nonlive cables he had already stolen.

The thief was identified from fingerprints from his severed hand.

Closer to home, thieves have stolen ground wires from 5,000 to 10,000 utility poles throughout the state owned by electric utility Westar Energy. Westar corporate spokeswoman Karla Olson said it costs about $100 a pole to replace the wires.

"We are now replacing ground wires with steel wire coated with copper, which won't bring as much in a salvage yard," she said. "We're hoping that discourages thieves."

Copper remains among the most attractive metal to those who sell scrap for cash. Copper prices now are averaging around $1.90 a pound, while coated copper wire is averaging about 60 cents a pound, Butts said. Aluminum brings about 40 cents a pound and brass brings about $1 a pound.

Iron and steel bring a range from $80 to $120 a ton, depending on the size of the scrap pieces.

Too damaged to be used

The stolen copper pipe from Salina Supply that was returned to the plumbing wholesaler was too damaged to be resold.

"We didn't get it all back. And what we got back was destroyed for our uses," said Mark Zimmerman, Salina Supply president.

Thursday afternoon, workers at Salina Iron and Metal unloaded 4,100 pounds of the stolen copper pipe, bringing a total of $7,790.

"We'll scrap it out, our insurance company will get the value of the scrap, and we'll file the claim with our insurance company for the rest," Zimmerman said.

Two Salina men, Larry E. Fuller and Steven A. Hutchinson, are facing charges for the theft, overnight on Oct. 3. A padlock was cut to gain entry to a back lot at the business, located at 302 N. Santa Fe, where the pipe and the trailer were stolen.

The men were caught by McPherson authorities when their pickup truck ran out of gas en route to Hutchinson, where they allegedly planned to cash in the metal at a scrap yard.

Zimmerman said his business has probably been overly complacent about the risk for metal theft. The plumbing warehouse sits three blocks east of the Salina police station and a block west of the city fuel station where officers gas up their cruisers.

"We have a lot of police passing by our store," he said.

Their warehouse has a security video camera system, plus a night watchman who makes a security check of the property as part of his nightly rounds, Zimmerman said.

"I think it's probably just a matter of adding more cameras, and more lighting," he said.

Next door, Salina Iron & Metal has 12 video cameras watching virtually every corner of its property. One of those cameras caught images that were useful to police in their investigation of the theft from Salina Supply, Butts said.

You gotta be careful

He said thieves make it tough for legitimate scrap recyclers. Some are people who sell metal to supplement their monthly Social Security or disability checks. Others might be farmers who find parting out junk machinery and vehicles offers a profitable way to spend the winter time, after planting and harvest chores are finished.

For larger loads of scrap metal brought in by customers, the scrap yard sometimes pays by check, rather than cash, as a precaution -- if the explanation for where the metal came from "seems fishy," Butts said.

State lawmakers this year passed a bill regulating scrap metal dealers. The major provisions require customers selling scrap worth more than $50 to present a photo ID, along with their name, address and place of business, if any. Dealers are required to record a description of the items purchased, the price paid, a copy of the seller's photo ID card.

Butts said he understands the need for regulating the industry to discourage theft, but he doesn't want to discourage those who recycle, either.

"If they're out there making an honest living, they're usually fine showing an ID, giving us a signature and even a thumb print," he said.

2 tubs and a pink bike

One of Butts' occasional customers, Doug Clemence, owns Treasure Shop Antiques at 436 N. Chicago. He stopped by Salina Iron & Metal recently with some items to recycle that he'd cleaned out of his garage.

His antiques store has had its own problems with metal theft.

"Hell, they stole two bathtubs with no feet on them," he said. "It's terrible, the theft. And they took a pink bicycle for my wife, they stole it."

Over the last five years, he's also had stolen a tailgate from a pickup and a child's metal merry-go-round.

It's become common for thieves to pillage metal from building supplies and appliances at construction job sites for new homes and businesses. Even dumpsters full of scrap at plumbing, heating and air conditioning businesses have become a target.

Before he put out surveillance cameras at his shop, thieves once cut the copper coils out of two rooftop industrial air conditioners that were stored outside awaiting installation, said Tom Pestinger, owner of Pestinger Heating & Air Conditioning Inc., 125 E. Avenue A.

The coils likely brought just pennies on the dollar.

"What they don't realize is that the coils they just cut out cost about $2,500," he said.

Be careful at the job site

You can't leave heating and cooling units at a job site any more, Pestinger said. Sometimes, even units that have been installed aren't safe. About a year ago, he said, a call came in from the Smoky Hill Education Service Center, which operates a continuing education center at the former Franklin Elementary School.

Their air conditioning wasn't working. A service technician soon discovered the condenser units outside the building had been stolen.

"What bothers me, if people are starving out there and doing it to feed their families, that's one thing. But you and I know it's probably going for drugs and things like that," Pestinger said.

At heating, air and plumbing contractor Systems 4, service manager Skip Knight says thefts from the service yard have included a nearly full 55-gallon barrel of scrap copper, weighing more than 100 pounds. The barrel was out of the range of the nearest surveillance camera.

Technicians won't leave an air conditioner at a job site unless they can connect the refrigeration lines and an electrician is there to hook up the unit, he said.

At the shop, new copper piping and other expensive metals are locked up in a steel shipping container. The container requires a key both to lock and unlock, and the number of keys is deliberately limited.

"We try not to even leave lengths of copper pipe unfastened on the (service) trucks," he said. Most of the trucks are parked in the locked yard at the business at night.

Love that Westar copper

Service trucks for Westar in Salina have been hit by thefts in recent years. The thieves target 25-foot reels of copper wire, which costs the company more than $100 a reel, said Tom Sydow, local Westar spokesman. About a year ago, two break-ins a couple of months apart amounted to a loss of multiple reels totaling about $5,000, he said.

Westar says its theft problems haven't been just costly, they're a safety concern and an inconvenience for customers.

On Oct. 5, thieves stealing copper wire from a Topeka substation left about 2,000 Westar customers without electricity for about two hours until repairs could be made, Olson said.

Westar's manager of revenue and protection claims, Marc Anderson, says the cost of copper theft ultimately affects utility rates for Westar customers. And it distracts the company from putting labor into improving its delivery system and making it more reliable.

"More importantly, it presents a serious danger to thief, our employees and our customers," Anderson said.

n Reporter David Clouston can be reached at 822-1403 or by e-mail at dclouston@salina.com.