Copper Theft Turns Into Chase With Shots Fired

[G.A. Heath]

Count the days till some well meaning yet confused person in the state government proposes and or gets signed into a law, something covering this type of theft..

“ Sellers of copper to a Certified Texas Copper Recovery Station(CTCRS) must have a certificate issued by the state of authorized demolition, said certificate will be issued only after a State or State Certified contracted inspector has conducted an on sight inspection and completed in triplicate the Certificate of estimated savage to be recovered form.. Said form must be validated at the TDOR (Texas Department of Redundancy) both before and after demolition has taken place, and again the first Wednesday of the month following the demolition, but no less than three weeks prior to offering said copper scrap to a CTCRS. CTCRS can be identified by the Copper Texas Star required to be displayed on a pole no less than 9.34 feet in height as measured from the base of the pole (base as defined by the lowest portion of pole encased in mounting material, to include cement piling that is subsurface)"

This last session a bill was introduced to require better record keeping by metal recyclers, I don't know if it passed or not but I know it was introduced. Our recyclers in my county already keep better records than that bill would have (or does if it passed) required as part of their plea bargains. Being on the state line we see metal stolen in New Mexico being brought over here and metal here taking across the state line, fortunately our county SO and the one across the state line both cooperate with each other on this issue.

Now for those who are wondering why the recyclers would have plea bargains that require them to keep excellent records, they were knowingly buying stolen metal and I know this for a fact.

[rosebud99]

we had a guy that had come across the river a few times in brownsvilleand stole the copper wiring out of some pumps on the river. seems he got greedy, chopped one pole down with an ax and must have thought the line was dead.. the think he climbed the next pole and came in contact with a nuetral and a hot phase. BP found his body after the grass fire was put out. stupid thing was that the hot phase he tried to cut was aluminum. we were told he had an entrance wound on his hand and an exit wound on his foot.

[SATX-Scrub]

Whatever happened to picking up aluminum cans on the side of the road? Its like a win/win community service!