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Thieves Cut Copper Wire Off Utility Poles

News Channel 8 photo by WALLACE PANTANOW

Police say copper wiring, which is now selling for $3 a pound and found on utility poles such as those hit Wednesday, is an attractive target for thieves.

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By KEITH MORELLI

The Tampa Tribune

Published: September 19, 2008

TAMPA - The two men caught Sidney Garcia's eye as they strolled onto North Highland Avenue. Garcia was on his porch having a smoke. It was about 4:30 a.m. Wednesday, and he had just fed some of the neighborhood's stray cats.

"I get up every morning between 3:30 and 4:30," he said Thursday afternoon. "I go to bed early."

He was on his porch when he noticed two men acting suspiciously around the utility pole south of his home. Hours later, their shenanigans were revealed: They were moving from pole to pole, cutting stretches of copper wire.

"I heard a noise down the street," Garcia said, recalling when he first spotted the thieves. "Two guys were standing at a light pole at the end of street. They disappeared, there was a noise, and then I saw them walking down the street toward my house. I went inside. I watched from my window."

The men walked to another pole and did the same thing, although Garcia couldn't see exactly what they were doing.

"I didn't go out to question them," he said. "I thought they were just goofing around."

A few hours later, after the sun had come up, Garcia looked at the poles.

"I realized then they had cut the wires."

The quarter-inch copper wires stretched from the top of the poles to the pavement and into the ground. Seven-foot sections, or from the ground level to as high as the men could reach, were missing.

Garcia called Tampa police.

In the area of the 3100 block of North Highland Avenue, an officer found six poles where ground wires were stripped.

There could be more, police spokesman Jim Contento said.

Copper is an enticing target for thieves, he said, now fetching more than $3 a pound.

It's such a problem that several law enforcement agencies have formed a task force to track such thefts in Polk and Hillsborough counties.

The thieves did not cut into live wires, nor were they ground wires, Contento said. He said the transmission wire belonged to Bright House Networks. As far as he knew, no one lost power, cable, phone or Internet connections.

"This is part of a nationwide problem," he said of copper theft. "It's not just a Tampa problem."

Police describe one wire thief as being white, in his 30s or 40s, between 5-foot-10 and 6-foot-2 with a medium build, short brown hair and wearing a blue tank top and dark blue pants.

The second man was black, in his 20s, about 5-foot-9 and weighing about 160 pounds. He wore a blue baseball cap and a dark blue workers shirt and pants, police said.

Both were last seen walking north of Highland Avenue.

Detectives made calls to area scrap metal yards on Thursday, asking whether anyone had brought in wire sections like the ones pilfered from the poles, Contento said, but by late afternoon, police had no suspects.

Reporter Keith Morelli can be reached at (813) 259-7760 or kmorelli@tampatrib.com.

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