As Minnesota spends millions on copper theft, recyclers crack the ‘Whac-A-Mole’ code in Texas
Star Tribune, By Kyeland Jackson, February 23, 2025
More than a decade ago in a city nearly 1,200 miles away, people were dying for copper wires.
It was around 2006 in Houston, and police Sgt. Robert Carson noticed that more and more would-be thieves were scaling utility poles to tamper with wires. Some hoped to avoid paying their electricity bill. Others, he said, were “just flat out trying to get the copper.”
“They were cutting bad wires and wires they shouldn’t be cutting, and ultimately lost their lives doing so,” Carson said. “The department realized then that, one, we needed to get this [info] out to the public, this is a very bad deal. So they started the metal theft unit. Then they started thinking: Where is this copper going?”
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