The risky allure of copper Mary Vallis, National Post Saturday, Sept. 4, 2010
Shortly after midnight in late August, three friends walked down a gravel road in the small town of Welland and stopped at a transformer box marked "High Voltage." One of them cut the lock and reached inside. Thousands of volts of electricity ran through his body; he was killed by the shock. One of his friends called 911; the surviving pair were arrested. Despite the obvious risk, they were allegedly trying to steal copper.
It is not a particularly easy or appealing crime, yet copper heists are more and more common. As the price of the metal rises on global markets, so too does the number of copper "scrappers" hauling all manner of stolen copper to scrapyards.
"It's the only time I've ever seen basic theft by drug addicts and the homeless people being driven by the stock exchange," said Sergeant Andria Cowan, who for two years was the Toronto Police force's dedicated "copper cop."
Think back to the HBO television series The Wire, when Bubbles, the heroin addict who roamed Baltimore's projects, would ransack construction sites for their pipes, throw them in his shopping cart and redeem them at scrapyards for drug money.
Thefts in Canada have involved armed hijackings and home explosions. There have been reports in Vancouver of addicts paying their dealers directly with stolen metal in exchange for drugs.
Low-level thieves may make off with enough money for their next fix, but copper theft takes an enormous toll. Just last week, near the shores of Ontario's Lake Huron, provincial police investigated two copper cases. In one, thieves kicked down the door of a vacant house and ripped apart the lathe and plaster walls for a few feet of pipe. In the other, someone made off with the ground wires from a television transmission tower.
The thieves made off with approximately $130 worth of copper, but left behind $40,000 worth of damage, according to the Ontario Provincial Police.
Copper theft peaked between 2006 and 2008, before the recession hit and prices plunged to less than a dollar a pound. As the economy recovers and the demand from China grows, the price is going up again, and is now hovering around US$3.40 a pound. Few new copper mines are popping up to boost production.
"While there is going to be some new mine development next year, it's not really going to be noticeable until about 2012," said Patricia Mohr, vice-president and commodity market specialist at Scotiabank. "Copper prices are going to remain very firm in the next 18 months."
So, too, will the heists. In Vancouver, at least one incident report crosses the desk of Telus spokesman Shawn Hall each day. Telus has thousands of kilometres of copper wire criss-crossing British Columbia. By 9 a.m. last Wednesday, he had already received three reports. Every incident costs Telus an estimated$50,000 in repairs and replacement telephone wires.
"It's insane," Mr. Hall said.
The thefts affect more than the company's profit sheets. It takes anywhere from 12 to 48 hours for telephone service to work again; the average theft affects 200 to 300 customers.
"These thieves are putting our customers' lives at risk," Mr. Hall said. "It's only a matter of time before someone picks up the phone to dial 911 and can't get through."
Telus is working with police and politicians in the Vancouver area to curb the problem through undercover police operations and new laws. Telus and other corporate victims want scrap metal dealers to act more like pawnbrokers, who are required to record sellers' identities to deter the sale of stolen goods.
Cities such as Vancouver and Richmond, B.C., now have laws, but Mr. Hall said the copper thieves are simply shifting to communities where the rules are not in place. As a result, Telus is pushing for provincial legislation.
Some dealers, however, would prefer to let the courts deal with scrappers by handing down harsher sentences.
"If the damn thieves would put as much ingenuity and drive into finding a real job, they'd probably be very good employees," said Len Shaw, executive director of the Canadian Association of Recycling Industries (CARI). "It's criminal, what people are doing. We have to get a little bit more serious about making the punishment fit the crime.
"The dealers argue that collecting customer information infringes on people's right to privacy. CARI helped launch a reporting system for stolen metal: a website where police can report thefts so that a bulletin can be sent to nearby recyclers.
But it can be difficult to distinguish a possible thief from any other member of the public getting rid of scrap metal.
One case involved an alleged dealer who would dole out drugs in exchange for copper and collect until he had a large, legitimate-looking load, Mr. Shaw said. Then he would take it to a recycler, appearing every bit a legitimate customer.
In another case, an elderly woman turned up at a scrapyard with her own copper grave marker. She and her husband had decided to be cremated, so she would no longer need it.
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