Copper and Robbers

By Rebecca Winters Keegan

They started with pipes and air conditioners. Then they came for Dan. "They literally cut him off at the knees," says Judy Moore, vice president of the neighborhood association in Los Angeles' historic Carthay Circle. Dan is a 7-ft. (2 m) bronze statue of a gold miner that stood in a Los Angeles park for 84 years, holding his sifting pan like a deep-dish pizza. Appraisers say he's worth $125,000. In February, thieves sliced Dan in two and took him to a scrap yard to be melted down for $900. Why did a couple of crooks have the brass to steal a gold miner? Because of copper.

Thanks to Asia's construction boom, the price of copper has risen from less than $1 per pound (0.45 kg) in 2003 to more than $4 per pound in April, and burglars are lifting the metal wherever they can find it. The copper in plumbing, air conditioners, utility wire, rain gutters, sprinklers and bronze sculptures like Dan (bronze is a copper alloy) is easy to sell and tough to trace, police say, making it a popular cash source for meth addicts.

Property owners, it turns out, do not watch the commodities market as keenly as druggies do. "People think of copper as cheap, like sand," says OneBeacon Insurance Group executive Charlie Sidoti. "But now you have to think of it like gold. You would never leave gold sitting out in the yard." OneBeacon estimates that it has seen a 300% increase in claims of copper theft in the past 18 months. Home foreclosures have worsened the trend, as empty buildings are easy targets for the time-consuming task of ripping out pipes and wiring. In California, theft of copper irrigation systems has damaged tomato and alfalfa crops. And churches and schools all over the U.S. are sweating it out after their industrial-size air conditioners have been gutted for their copper coils.

Property owners should protect copper from burglars the same way they would a stereo, says Sidoti--install fences, motion-detector lights and security cameras. Meanwhile, lawmakers looking to crack down on copper thieves are starting at the scrap yard. Thirty-five states have pending or signed legislation requiring people selling metal to show ID. If someone comes in with suspicious goods, scrap dealers need to ask questions like, "Why would you have 20 manhole covers anyway?" says Bruce Savage of the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries. When Dan the miner arrived at an L.A. scrap yard, the yard's owner called the LAPD, whose art-theft detail recognized Dan's description. The men charged with cutting Dan in two are about to go on trial, and the residents of Carthay Circle are preparing for the miner's return from art restorers. "We need to figure out a way to keep him safe," says Moore. "We're thinking about putting a GPS chip in him."

RIPPED OUT Wiring from traffic lights and ball fields

GUTTED Air-conditioner coils from schools and churches

SCRAP METAL CSI The price of copper has quadrupled since 2003 owing to the construction boom in Asia. Here are a few items thieves are cashing in at scrap yards

PLUCKED Sprinkler heads as well as parts of fire hydrants