Stopping Scrap Metal Theft

Over the last five years the prices of scrap metals have gone up as much as three or four times their old levels making the business of stealing and selling scrap even more attractive to anyone looking to make some quick cash. Russ Gower, President of CNY Resource Recovery in Syracuse, says this has created a lot of problems for his recovery shop as far as trying to make sure they're not buying stolen material. That is why the Syracuse police department created a special unit called Operation Copperhead to deal with the problem. Sergeant Tom Connellan says they have refocused detectives that investigated pawn shops for stolen property to the metal recovery shops in the area. Connellan says they have made many arrests but the problem is so prevalent its hard to see progress. Another problem is that the metal has no real distinguishing features, making it difficult to tell what material was stolen. Connellan says there has been a recent decrease in metal prices since the end of the Olympics, which caused China's demand for material to go up, and he hopes that with the drop in price will come a drop in thefts. For now, he says, their numbers are holding pretty steady as they have for the past year and a half.