Milwaukee County
Bold copper bandits strike homes by day
Periodically, columnist Jim Stingl hits the streets of Milwaukee. To see his latest video columns, click the thumbnails below.
"I awoke this morning to find three teens stealing the copper downspouts from my house."
So begins an email I received Friday from Gretchen Farrar-Foley, a Milwaukee schoolteacher and a high school classmate of mine from a few years - OK, decades - ago.
The thieves were bold or stupid enough to be operating in the daylight around 6 a.m. Farrar-Foley could see them right outside her window. These greenish copper tubes along the front and side of her Lake Drive house are original to the 1924 structure.
"I yelled, 'What the hell are you doing with my downspouts?' "
The answer is that they were trying to turn them into cash. Scrap dealers are paying top dollar for copper and other metals these days - about $3 a pound for a copper downspout.
With her downspouts in hand, the bandits ran across the street and through a neighbor's yard. Another neighbor had spotted the teens earlier and thought they looked suspicious, so he called police.
Officers responded quickly and intercepted two of the thieves as they returned to a car, which had a trunk full of crumpled up copper downspouts. The third guy got away.
Milwaukee County Executive Chris Abele was another victim of the copper capers last week, losing downspouts from his east side property. In the course of two days, 14 homes on the east side and Washington Heights were hit, said Milwaukee police Capt. Carianne Yerkes, who is with the department's neighborhood policing bureau.
The suburbs also have been hit. Hales Corners Lutheran School lost $650 worth of copper downspouts earlier this month. Homes have been stripped this summer in Shorewood, Whitefish Bay and Wauwatosa, according to crime logs.
"Ever since the economy took a dive, the price of scrap metal - all scrap metal - just has skyrocketed," Yerkes said, which is why lowlifes have been taking brass vases from cemeteries, and crooks have been showing up at scrap yards with stolen cars hoping to collect their salvage value. Police have cracked down on both, and Milwaukee police fortified its scrap-busters unit.
"Unfortunately, when people have things in their yard that are of value, it's so easy to walk in, take it and walk away. It's a crime of opportunity that happens in a second," Yerkes said.
The two dudes who were arrested had already made about $700. One is 22 years old, and the other is 20. Both have previous felony and misdemeanor convictions, according to online court records. The district attorney's office is reviewing the new arrests for charges.
One recycling firm in town told me the law requires it to check the ID of anyone bringing in valuable metals, including copper. They have to sign something saying they own the materials, and the transaction is recorded on video. The company owner said he preferred not to be named in an article about theft.
Farrar-Foley got the downspouts back, but they were too crumpled and bent to reinstall. Her rough estimate to replace them is around $2,500. Some of her neighbors have been taking steps to make sure their downspouts are secured to the house.
Until now, Farrar-Foley hardly gave a second thought to the downspouts on her home.
"I never thought of them to be a theft target," she said, especially during the day while she was home. "It's just insane to me."
Call Jim Stingl at (414) 224-2017 or email at jstingl@journalsentinel.com
