VANCOUVER, Wash. — Metal thieves did an estimated $50,000 in damages to businesses in the 3200 block of NE 42nd Street in Vancouver.
The stealing of valuable metal and selling it for pennies on the dollar has become an epidemic, Vancouver police said. This time the crooks hit air conditioning units, ripping them apart and cutting out the copper.
Victims said the crooks get a few bucks while they get stuck with thousands in damages. “They leave the parts that don’t make ’em any money. The rest of it just disappears,” Arlene Haney from Premier Investment Co. said. Haney said she’s frustrated because someone destroyed six of her company’s air conditioners, which will cost $3,500 each to replace. “I don’t understand why they just don’t get a job. It’s very costly for us and they just don’t care,” Haney said.
Last week Haney came to work and found one of her air conditioners dismantled with its copper tubing removed. Every night for the next two days thieves returned, stealing the other five units. Haney said she doesn’t know how to stop the thefts, other than putting up brighter lights, cutting back landscaping and installing cameras. “It’s a little scary. You don’t really think people will be that brazen, and they seem to hit everybody in the neighborhood, it seems like,” Haney said.
The crooks struck two other nearby establishments as well, destroying heating and air conditioning units there, too. The thieves hit a church, tearing apart a large air conditioning unit along with two small ones. A heat pump from another business was also destroyed. “We’ll have to dig deep to find the money to fix this. Insurance will pay for part of it but not 100 percent,” said Jim Kersteter of the First Evangelical Church.
In Washington, if you sell metal to a scrap yard there’s a 10-day waiting period before a check is mailed to you. In Oregon, scrap yards can hand recyclers cash as soon as they bring metal in. Police said Oregon needs to pass similar laws to Washington’s to discourage the thieves.
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