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[Southsider2k12]

http://thenewsdispatch.com/main.asp?Sectio...amp;TM=43263.03

Thieves Get Pennies On Dollar For Scrap
Rick Richards
City Editor, The News-Dispatch

Three times since the beginning of the year, a south side business owner I know has been victimized by thieves. The thieves are called "scrappers," a cute name to describe a dirty occupation. Scrapper is far too polite a word for what they do.

They're burglars, thieves, crooks, and they take things that don't belong to them without regard for other people's property.

This business owner I mentioned has twice had holes knocked or cut into the walls of his building. In the latest incident last week, a hole was cut in his roof.

And what were the thieves after? Metal. In this case, copper.

The really frustrating thing is when that metal is sold to a scrap yard, the people who took it will be paid pennies on the dollar for its real value. But the business owner who was burglarized will have to pay full price to replace it. And who makes up the difference? We do. When that business owner shows up at someone's house after receiving a call, he'll have to mark up his cost more than he'd like in order to cover his expenses, which are a lot higher now because of scrap thieves.

But this business owner isn't alone. Scrap metal thieves are everywhere. Each week when I set out my garbage, it's a certainty that just around midnight a battered pickup truck will slowly drive up and down my street and someone in that truck will go through every garbage can looking for scrap. OK, I'm throwing it away and I can't really complain if he's hauling off something I consider trash, but I've come to realize that is his job.

As far as I know, he's not breaking into any buildings or cutting catalytic converters from cars and trucks, which seems to be the latest craze in La Porte and rural La Porte County.

The fact that these thieves are so brazen as to cut a hole in a wall of a business or cut a catalytic converter out of a truck parked on a busy street or walk onto a business' storage yard and take I-beams, as happened earlier this year from a contractor's business on the city's West Side, makes them dangerous characters.

Don't scoff. Last winter, two groups of metal thieves ran into each other in South Bend and four of them wound up dead. The bodies were found hidden in two manholes on abandoned industrial property. The two men arrested said they thought the four had stolen some of the metal they had collected. By collected, they meant it was metal they had stolen from someone else.

Maybe it's the economy. When things go sour like this, people get desperate. Whether they need cash for gas for their truck or a roof over their head or food on the table - or drugs in their veins or up their nose - they do things they shouldn't do.

Economic hardship, however, doesn't excuse their actions. By trying to ease their economic hardship, they create a hardship for someone else.

That business owner I told you about now has thousands of dollars in building repairs, and I can only imagine what will happen to his insurance rates.

Calling someone a scrapper is too polite a word. They're thieves and ought to be treated as such.