To thieves, it’s as good as gold

Fueled by methamphetamine and working like termites, they have blacked out entire neighborhoods, stripped building sites and reduced telephone poles to splintered wood.

Whether at a school, business or hospital, the thieves’ quarry is always the same: copper.

Over the last few months, copper-wire thefts have skyrocketed statewide and across the nation. Although copper has long been a target of those desperate for quick cash, the price of the metal -- which has climbed as high as $4 a pound -- and plentiful construction sites in growth areas such as the Inland Empire are driving the current crime wave. As of Tuesday, copper was selling at about $2.82 a pound.

“In two months’ time, we lost $25,000 worth of wire from the land we own in Fontana,” said Michael Mendonca, who runs a recycling center. “We had people coming in every night ripping out wire. I would put chains on the gate, and they would cut through them. They didn’t care what damage they caused; they just wanted enough for their next fix.”

Thieves have shown remarkable tenacity digging up buried phone cables, stripping power-generating windmills of wire and making off with 1,000-pound spools of copper.

Police say they burn off the insulation and take it to recycling plants, where they are paid cash. Most of the metal is shipped to recyclers in Los Angeles, and within 24 hours, authorities say, it’s bound for China, which, like India, has an enormous appetite for copper to wire its rapidly developing economy.

Riverside Police Det. Charles Payne said the thefts represented a serious public safety issue. Hospitals are affected when phone lines go down. Burglar alarms don’t work, and 911 calls can’t be made, he said.

“Any time you have someone messing with the power grid, it’s dangerous,” he said. “This is a very large problem, and it’s growing.”

Riverside County Sheriff Bob Doyle has met with AT&T; and Verizon executives to discuss the problem.

“The thieves are getting more sophisticated,” said Sgt. Dennis Gutierrez, a spokesman for the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department. “We had some come out from Walnut to strip wire from windmills in the desert. They are driving around in white vans so people think they are workers.”

Gutierrez said telephone poles were being cut down with chain saws and wire stolen.

“The one common denominator we have noticed is that they are meth users,” he said investigators had concluded. “They are awake at all times, walking around like zombies.”

Similar robberies of copper have occurred nationwide. In Minnesota, 22,000 pounds of copper was stolen in one night recently. Last month, a thief in Irvine ripped out $20,000 worth of copper wire from a building undergoing renovation.

Verizon spokesman Jon Davies said the company had lost $297,795 in copper since 2006 in California alone, not including money spent on work to replace the wire or loss of service to customers.

“This is a national problem,” he said. “We try to keep our cables high on the poles to make it harder to get, but the people who do this are highly motivated, and they have the equipment to get at it.”

On a good night, a criminal can easily make more than $1,000. In remote Painted Hills in the Coachella Valley, $10,000 worth of wire was taken from a single windmill. Suspects were later caught.

In August, San Bernardino County sheriff’s deputies arrested a Newberry Springs couple they say had stripped 10,000 pounds of copper from an Edison solar plant in Daggett over a three-month period and had sold it for $16,000.

In Adelanto, deputies recently found a man suffering severe electrical burns to his hands. They said he had cut into a live wire while breaking into a Southern California Edison box. Not only did he seriously injure himself, but he also blew out transformers, which sparked numerous brush fires, deputies said.

Others have had arms and legs blown off by live wires, and in one case a man was electrocuted while climbing inside a generator trying to steal copper, according to San Bernardino County sheriff’s deputies.

The Riverside Unified School District has been hit 10 times since January, losing nearly $60,000 in wire. The air-conditioning units were targeted.

“The large copper cable that feeds them is exposed and on the rooftop,” said Mike Fine, deputy superintendent. “Classrooms have been disrupted, and we have had to move kids to other rooms. They had no lights, no nothing. This is money right out of the school’s pocket.”

Fontana, Bloomington and Rancho Cucamonga have had a flurry of metal thefts.

“We are getting hammered by it,” said Det. Maggie Finneran of the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department. “It’s big here because of all the construction, and you have scads and scads of copper wire. Two weeks ago we had a ring of guys stealing irrigation pipes from agriculture land. A lot are small-scale [methamphetamine users] getting $300 or $400 a day. Recyclers often turn a blind eye, even though they are required to ask where it came from.”

Deputies have conducted sting operations at recycling plants, seizing stolen copper and making arrests. There are 13 such businesses in the Fontana area alone.

“We review receipts each day. The average receipt used to be $20 or $30, and now it’s around $200 or $300,” Finneran said. “I say 99.9% of recycled copper goes to China, and they make products that they sell back to us.”

On a recent day, bins loaded with copper wire and pipe were lined up at Alamo Recycling in Fontana. The business is on Valley Boulevard, a gritty industrial corridor of warehouses, scrap dealers and gas stations.

Men, women and families were recycling assorted metal. Children dropped empty beer and soda cans in containers while adults lugged around rusty pipes. The metal was weighed, and customers collected their money at a small window.

“The Chinese market sets the price for our metals,” said Mendonca, Alamo owner. “If we get anything in here that looks even slightly shaky, I call the police.”

At nearby Bloomington Recycling, Anthony Cooks said it was often hard to identify where the copper comes from.

“It’s very difficult to track,” said Cooks, chief operating officer of the business. “We have a hot sheet of what is stolen. We ask, ‘Does this belong to you?’ and then look at their license. But as long as you have high unemployment rates out here, you will keep getting stolen material.”

Copper is not nearly as precious as gold, but people have been stealing it for centuries.

“This has literally been going on forever. It rises and falls depending on the price of the commodity,” said Ken Geremia, spokesman for the Copper Development Assn., which seeks to expand copper markets in North America.

“Copper is 100% recyclable material and has been recycled for millenia. It’s also very important to the infrastructure of countries like China and India. That’s one reason for the rise in demand. Last May copper reached historic highs of $4 per pound.”

Criminals are also taking aluminum and brass, police say. Manhole covers and urns from cemeteries also show up. Even household recycling set at the curb is being swiped.

In Hemet and San Jacinto, thieves have gone after fire hydrants, which are made of brass and can weigh 170 pounds and yield up to $1 a pound from recyclers. Last month a suspect was arrested.

“We have had a dozen fire hydrants stolen over the past year,” said Lt. Dean Evans of the Hemet police. “These guys are also stealing copper. I would venture to guess they are all meth users. If there was a fire near one of these spots, there would be nothing the fire department could do.”

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david.kelly@latimes.com