A rash of copper wire thefts in recent months and a list of about 35 local copper-stealing criminals has the Prince George RCMP calling on corporations, citizens and sellers to help address the problem.
"This isn't necessarily a policing problem," said Sgt. Kent MacNeill at the site of the latest theft off Pickering Road by the CN Rail Bridge.
"This is a corporate issue; you've got corporations losing hundreds of thousands of dollars. It's a recycling issue. It's a provincial ministry issue (which) does the enforcement for the metal recycling act and it's a policing issue. And it's dangerous."
Police made its second copper wire arrest in one week on Tuesday afternoon, after finding the downed Telus wires littering the grass and rocky beach underneath the bridge.
Michael James White, 33, has been charged with break and enter, possession of property obtained by a crime and breach of probation in connection with that incident.
Nearby, MacNeill showed the abandoned BC Hydro facility a couple hundred metres from the spot, where the thieves brought the long slabs of copper wire, almost a fist thick in width, and burned the rubber casing off. The melted rubber coated the floor by two fire pits, where the thieves had propped the long wire strip. Broken glass was strewn across the floor, along with four needles, a crack pipe and a pile of wood ready to burn.
BC Hydro's old workstation has become known for criminal activity, said MacNeill.
"We'd love to see this place be boarded up properly and we don't have to come back here again," he said.
BC Hydro said it does regular drive-bys of the site and repairs any broken doors - and would do so in this case.
"We do have signage up on the property the buildings that are standing are locked," said Bob Gammer, spokesman for BC Hydro. "At that point we feel that we've taken reasonable steps to keep people out however if trespassers want to get into the site, we're not responsible for their actions. If they willfully choose to break down a door to enter a building, that's an action that they're doing at their own risk."
The company has tried to remove all metal of value from the site so that it isn't a target for theft, Gammer said, but said that other active sites have seen an uptick in thefts of its wire in the area.
Telus has been the primary victim lately, said MacNeill, and Telus spokeswoman Liz Sauve estimating about a dozen such thefts since January, an unusual amount.
Other hot spots have been just west of Prince George, where people were cutting down lines in rural locations straight off the poles.
Most of the targeted lines have been Telus property, but MacNeill said thieves also target commercial properties, as was the case of last week's copper wire theft valued at over $125,000 from a business on PG Pulpmill Road. Lorne Cecil Paquette, 67, and Robert James Herron, 65 are charged in relation to that crime.
Selling the metal
Thieves can get more money if they take it to scrap shops already stripped and the price right now isn't particularly high, MacNeill said.
Tony Muratori, Northern Regional Manager of ABC Recycling said it ranges from $1.50 to $2.50 per pound depending on type and that price has dropped by about 70 cents over the last six months.
For MacNeill the spate of thefts despite the price is concerning.
"The price is actually relatively low right now which is a little scary because, if it triples in price, are we going to have three times the problem?" MacNeill said.
MacNeill said the RCMP will meet with the three local scrap yards - ABC Recycling, Richmond Steel Recycling and Allen's Scrap and Salvage - to talk strategies about addressing what they call a "rise in wire theft reports."
Muratori said police started alerting his company in June and since then ABC has stopped buying burnt wire.
"We try and ask for proof of ownership, meaning if you came in with wire that is burnt, we'd ask where got it and then you'd have to provide that for us and then we'd ask for contact information," said Muratori, who didn't know if the company has seen an increase people trying to sell stolen copper, but noted there are more than 300 scrap dealers in B.C. alone.
"But now, over the last little bit, we don't want the hassle, so we're just turning customers away that have burnt wire. We don't want anything to do with it and hopefully that helps in the investigation."
Muratori said burnt wire can be an obvious indicator, but he's hoping at the meeting with police, ABC can learn what else to be on the look out for.
"We really don't know the types of material we're being asked to follow," he said.
"We don't want any customer or company in town to be hurt by theft. It happens to us as well," said Muratori of thefts from ABC's seven-acre site.
Alex Allen of Allen's Scrap & Salvage said he was hoping to get the RCMP's list of frequent offenders, so that he can enter them into his system with a "do not sell" flag.
"It's a start. It's not the solution. It's not going to be the end of it, but it's a start," said Allen, who hadn't necessarily noticed a rise in people showing up with suspicious metal.
He relies on calls from companies to let him know what to be on the lookout for after thefts, but said it's on the buyer to know what looks suspicious.
"You can usually tell if somebody comes in and they've got a 1,000 pounds of bright and shiny wire, usually you would know if they should have that," said Allen, adding that was the case Wednesday morning when he turned away someone he suspected of possessing stolen metal. He said the company never buys burnt metal.
Allen didn't know if there's a local market for wire, but said he wouldn't be surprised if some buyers looked the other way so they could buy it a discount price, especially since it's very difficult to prove stolen and doesn't always come with documents that can prove ownership.
"For one thing copper wire doesn't have any identifying copper marks so you could come in with copper wire and tell me it's yours and I'd have to believe you," he said. "If you strip it, then it's really not identifiable."
The company, which he said has been in business for 51 years, requires a person show up in a vehicle, provide valid driver's license, and the staff takes down all identifying details of the person.
The damages
Recording those details are requirements laid out in the Metal Dealers and Recyclers Act, enacted in 2012 to address rising levels of metal theft and increase the responsibility of scrap buyers and seller.
"Since then we have seen a reduction in the number of thefts but they continue to remain a problem," said Sauve of Telus' experience since the change.
According to a 2012 article in the Journal of Commerce, Telus saw 380 thefts in 2011, adding up to about $19 million worth of metal.
Richmond Steel Recycling would not be a spot for drive-up sales (it typically deals with corporations and will only pay by cheque) so it hasn't notice a surge in suspicious sellers, said Geoff Salton, division manager.
But the company has been getting more and more calls from partners like Canfor and Telus about stolen metal. He estimates one to two calls a week, which is more than usual.
"They replaced one major set of lines in and around Prince George (in June) and they came back two days later and it was all stolen," Salton said. "That's how fast it's happening."
The cost of repairs can range in the tens of thousands of dollars or higher.
"Our crews are working to restore service as soon as possible but the repairs oftentimes prove to be very complex and time consuming given that the thieves are not making clean cuts," Sauve said.
The key here, Sauve said, is that the theft isn't a victimless crime.
"These thefts leave our customers without access to phoning family and friends and it can also leave them without access to critical 9-1-1 in the event of an emergency so it's something that we take very seriously."
Correction: A previous version of this article incorrectly spelled BC Hydro spokesman Bob Gammer's name.
