As brazen copper wire thieves continued to target the Harbor Gateway community over the Thanksgiving holiday, their latest series of thefts were all caught on camera.
“Our community is just being ravaged right now by this group that is stealing copper.”
The cameras captured the suspects using a grinder to cut several wires from poles before putting the copper in a shopping cart and walking away. A neighbor said the mill sent sparks flying into the air late in the afternoon.
‘They steal copper from anything and everything,’
David Matthews of the Harbor-Gateway Chamber of Commerce said the thieves have gone a step further with their thefts, causing about $500,000 in damage to one building.
“They go in and shut off power to the utility poles and wait for the backup alarm to go off,” he said. “They go in and steal whatever they want to take. This building in particular had half a million dollars in damage.”
The month before, thieves broke into a nearby building through a daycare center.
“They basically took the LADWP transformers, stole all the copper coming into the building and looted that building,” Matthews said.
More recently, thieves have targeted a railroad crossing down the street, according to Matthews.
“They took out all the crossing signals on two specific streets and stole the copper,” Matthews added. “They steal copper from anything and everything.”
On Tuesday morning, video shows a thief falling from a utility pole at 2:15 a.m. before continuing to load the car.
“The group went to the AT&T poles, cut the wires and stole 600 pounds of copper,” Matthews said. “These guys just don’t care.”
Matthews said he is grateful to the Los Angeles Police Department and the LA County Sheriff’s Department, as well as others, for working together to catch the thieves.
“There have been some arrests, but the group doing this is still on the streets,” he said.
He begged the thieves to stop the thefts and leave the community.
‘Stop it. We don’t want you in the community,” Matthews said.
