Eighty-two arrests have been made in a recent crackdown aimed at combating a “growing epidemic” of copper wire thefts, city officials said Tuesday.
City Councilors Kevin de León and Traci Park credited the arrests and 2,000 pounds of recovered wire to their Copper Wire Task Force — dubbed the Heavy Metals Task Force — adopted in late February in partnership with the Los Angeles Police Department and the Bureau of Street Lighting.
The initiative is “the most aggressive and proactive effort” to reduce the theft of copper and telecommunications wires, which have left predominantly working-class neighborhoods without street lights or internet service, said Peter Brown, De León’s communications director.
The Los Angeles Police Department arrested 82 people and seized 2,000 pounds of stolen copper wire.
(Michael Blackshire / Los Angeles Times)
Standing next to the recovered wire — as well as saws, bolt cutters and drills used to strip metal from public infrastructure — De León said 60 of the 82 people arrested were facing felony charges.
“Our message is very clear to the criminals who are looting the city piece by piece: The city of Los Angeles is no longer your ATM,” De León said at a news conference Tuesday, calling the results a “significant victory.”
LAPD Central Bureau Deputy Chief Michael Oreb said authorities have deployed 26 task force operations, ranging from high-visibility patrols to undercover actions. On East 16th Street near Butte Street Junction, the scene of Tuesday’s announcement, police on Monday dismantled a wire-stripping group that was using the alley as a storage area for stolen equipment.
Oreb said the thieves often recruited people with drug addictions to help them carry out their plans.
“They were doing this to fund their drug trafficking habit, targeting specific locations where they knew the wire was easy to obtain and bringing it back here to the group that would ultimately take it and sell the scrap metal,” Oreb said.
A graphic shows copper wire stolen from a news conference in Los Angeles on Tuesday.
(Michael Blackshire / Los Angeles Times)
Authorities also recovered nine firearms and are investigating “suspicious activity” by junkyards, recycling centers and other facilities that may have received the stolen wires.
Much of the stolen wiring was found in RVs, which Park said were used to “provide cover and shelter for these criminal acts.”
“As we battle a real homelessness emergency here in Los Angeles, it is beyond perverse that copper wire thieves are taking advantage of the situation to use RVs to house and further their crimes,” she said.
Both Park and De León stressed that copper wire theft was not a “victimless crime,” challenging sentiments expressed at a city council meeting in February when the task force was put to a vote.
Councilmen Eunisses Hernandez and Hugo Soto-Martínez voted against the motion, which passed 13-2, saying more emphasis should be placed on preventative rather than punitive efforts.
The task force, which was modified “due to the theft of objects other than copper wire,” will be reinforced with an additional $200,000 from the De León district, he said Tuesday.
De León and Park also introduced two motions Tuesday to continue their efforts, one of which asked the Public Lighting Board to mark its copper wire as city property.
The theft of copper wires has left neighborhoods without adequate street lighting.
(Michael Blackshire / Los Angeles Times)
The other motion calls for City Attorney Hydee Feldstein Soto to draft an ordinance prohibiting the possession of telecommunications cables by any person or business not affiliated with telecommunications companies.
The cables are stolen and burned or melted to expose the copper wires, which are then sold to metal recyclers, the motion says, leaving communities without data services.
“We’re trying to send a message: think twice, because if we catch you with [stolen wires]”You’re going to be in big trouble,” De León said.
