Since the beginning of 2010 there has been 3,485 incidents, totaling over $4.6 million dollars, of scrap metal theft in the St. Louis area, with the most common form being the theft of copper tubing from homes. When asked for a response, the Mayor’s office (probably) offered: “What do you want from us? Geez. It’s better than getting knife-raped.” Well, that’s a good point, but this still seems like a pretty big problem, so the police are looking in to the matter by rounding up the area scrap metal dealers and asking them to please stop facilitating this whole shady industry since we’re all pretty sure there isn’t an underground penny counterfeiting copper press somewhere all the copper thieves have access too.
“With all of us working together we can probably work something out.” — James Simmons, with St. Louis Metal and Recycling Co.
Or not.
The city wants to eliminate the option of a cash payout for amounts under $500 and distribute a list of own offenders that the dealers won’t sell to, while the dealers say a no cash option would hurt their homeless customers (hard to mail a check with no address). However, what laws will matter if there is a dealer out there, taking the stolen metal under the table?
“All that stuff will have to be worked out in future meetings where we can sit down and talk with the police and the scrap workers,” Simmons said. “With all of us working together we can probably work something out.”
Probably? Yeah, he seems really motivated to work things out and be all legal and stuff alright. The last time we were as motivated was…uh…it was…eh, we’ll tell you later.
via STLToday