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A $156,000 for a Light Pole? What, we've run out of trees?

Light poles vanishing -- believed sold for scrap by thieves
130 street fixtures in Baltimore have been cut down
- Gary Gately, New York Times
Friday, November 25, 2005

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cg...type=printable


Baltimore -- Given that they stand some 30 feet tall, their disappearance is attracting a good deal of attention here -- even as their final destination remains a mystery.

Thieves are sawing down aluminum light poles. Some 130 have vanished from Baltimore's streets in the last several weeks, authorities say, presumably sold for scrap metal. But so far the case of the pilfered poles has stumped the police and left many local residents wondering just how someone manages to make off with what would seem to be a conspicuous street fixture.

The poles, which weigh about 250 pounds apiece, have been snatched during the day and in the middle of the night, from two-lane blacktop roads and from parkways with three lanes on either side of grass median strips, in poor areas and in some of the city's most affluent neighborhoods. Left behind are half-foot stubs of metal, with wires that carry 120 volts neatly tied and wrapped in black electric tape.

"It's a newfound phenomenon; I have to say we haven't seen this before," a spokesman for the city's transportation department, David Brown, said. "Apparently, the culprits know what they're doing because we're talking about 30-foot poles here. It's not like you can stick one in a grocery cart and get rolling."

The culprits seem to have pole-snatching down to a model of precision and efficiency, city officials say. They appear to have gone so far as dressing up as utility crews, police say, and placing orange traffic cones around the poles about to be felled, to avoid arousing suspicion among motorists.

The missing poles have become yet another measure of the desperation in one of the country's most violent cities. Last year, Baltimore, with a population about one-twelfth that of New York City's, had a homicide rate more than five times as high.

An illegal drug trade fuels much of the violence. Health officials say 40,000 addicts live among Baltimore's estimated 650,000 residents. For at least a decade, addicts who cash in scrap metal to pay for their next fix have been ripping metal pipes, radiators and wires out of vacant houses, and prying cast-iron security grates and downspouts from buildings.

But the audacity of the latest thefts has startled even law enforcement officials. "It definitely is brazen," said Officer Nicole Monroe, a city police spokeswoman. "It surprises me that people would be so brazen as to do something like this."

The police have no suspects, Monroe said.

Some observers here -- in calls to talk radio programs, letters to newspapers, chats over a beer or coffee -- wonder how the thieves have eluded police for this long.

"If the cops can't catch guys who're cutting down 30-foot poles, how are they going to crack a major drug gang?" said Chip Franklin, a talk-show host on WBAL Radio, a local news and talk station. "What's next? Someone taking a downtown building?"

But Lynn Smith, manager at Modern Junk and Salvage Co. in Baltimore, said the thieves' quest for quick cash did not surprise her. "They find any way they can to get the metal and then the money in Baltimore," Smith said. "They don't care how they get it."

She added that she and other local dealers in scrap metal were "on alert" for sections of aluminum light poles and would not buy them. However, Smith suggested, thieves may be cutting the poles into pieces, then heading out of town to sell the scrap aluminum, which goes for about 35 cents a pound.

It will cost about $156,000 to replace each pole, the metal arms that extend over roads and the glass globes, city officials said.

Beyond the financial loss, Monroe said, the thefts could increase the danger of other crimes.

"From a public safety standpoint, what these thieves are doing is just horrible," she said. "People want well-lit areas when they're walking and when they're driving in the city."

Pole theft "is a crime," she said, "and we will actively pursue anybody" caught doing it or suspected of it.

For now, though, parts of Baltimore have grown a bit darker at nightfall.

Some time ago, highway departments were going to aluminum guardrails. They cost more at first but never had to be painted so it was cost-effective. Trouble was, the new installations were gone by the next day! 'Don't see them anymore.

A few years ago some enterprising criminal types stole a street in Tacoma WA......yup a street...well the paving anyway. the street in old north Tacoma was paved in stone a rareity in these parts. some one wanted some pavers so these enterprising guys simply took some construction equipment scooped up the paving stones dumped in to a few trucks and were gone...no trace just removed the paving stones from this highend old neighborhood not a mile from city hall. A side note around here we have a number of suspected druggies that dispose of their garbage not by the old method of taking it out on a back road, today all back roads are gated or ditched so no one can drive down them. The Druggies just dump their garbage in he middle of a county rd and take off. Rd crew cleans it up and we the citizens pay once again. How do I know it's druggies....simple there is usually several hundred empty containers of Affedrine in the garbage and often discarded hypodermic needels.I used to give classes on handling discarded drug junk to the road crews.

Bullwnkl.