Blitz Bureau
THEFT of metal accessories and fittings has been a matter of concern in urban areas in the US for decades. It is largely attributed to people trying to make a fast buck, and sometimes, to pranksters.
Lucrative crime
Increasing demand for metals, especially for copper, has made it more lucrative for such street criminals. Thieves have been stripping copper wire out of thousands of streetlights, while other valuable materials have been stolen from statues and even gravesites and selling it to scrap metal recyclers for cash, reported The New York Times recently. “The lights are going out across American cities, as a result of a brazen and opportunistic type of crime,” it said.
The wiring typically fetches only a few hundred dollars, but blacked-out lights pose safety hazards to drivers and pedestrians, and are costing cities millions to repair, it added. According to the NYT, the 6th Street Bridge in Los Angeles is wired to glow with colorful lights celebrating the city’s spirit. The bridge is also known as the ‘Ribbon of Light’. But it goes dark at night now.
And so do stretches of the busy 405 freeway and dozens of street blocks across the city, found the newspaper. The report mentioned how people across the US are inconvenienced due to such thefts, where it even led to loss of life.
Hit by car and killed
For example, in Saint Paul, Minnesota, a man was hit by a car and killed while crossing a street near his home where streetlights had gone out. In Las Vegas and surrounding communities, more than 970,000 feet of electrical wiring, the equivalent of 184 miles, has gone missing from streetlights over the past two years, alleged the report. Across Los Angeles County, it added, more than 290 fire hydrants have gone missing since January.
