Suspected Copper Thief Shot Dead In Palmer Park...

[Carey]

Total agreement with English.

[wolverine]

Again time for my copy and paste post of scrap metal ban ideas.

Only licensed contractors with permits from an active construction project can resell metal, all of which must be documented.

You must have a special vehicle license to carry freight [[such as scrap metal). For example, in my state I was pulled over for moving my friend's furniture in my truck. It was explained to me that I could not do that without a special license, and by having items in the back of my truck, and driving on a street with a median, I was breaking a law. I was not ticketed, but warned. This has had a positive impact on regulating the transport of scrap metal where I live. It doesn't ban it, but restricts it and imposes fees on it to make unaffordable to the common citizen, which is not a bad thing.

Say you are doing a home remolding job and want to exchange that extra copper wire for cash. Too bad. You'll have to toss it in the recycling bin. It's picked up by your municipal recycling service, and you don't benefit. Is that a bad thing? No. Because most America doesn't take left over metal to a scrapyard. They throw it away.

To be fair, eliminate the can deposit program. It's not needed, and while people think they are getting what they spent back, they are actually losing money and time. We sort our trash now, we don't need people returning cans. Remove 10 cents on the cost of canned beverages up front.

[mikeinmotown]

Great shot. Bye Bye

[Zacha341]

Cogs indeed. I could not have said this better...

There's so much going on in this thread -- from bringing back drawing/quartering to the use of the word "hubris" -- until I don't even know where to begin to join the conversation.

I will just observe that the scrapper and the shooter are both cogs. Pay no attention to the machine behind the curtain, folks, that instigates both scrapping and shooting. There is no moral high ground here, but these two individuals are still on the surface -- this rabbit hole goes deep, deep, deep...

A man is dead. Another's life will never be the same.

And our grand old city yet remains on life support...

[MSUguy]

To be fair, eliminate the can deposit program. It's not needed, and while people think they are getting what they spent back, they are actually losing money and time. We sort our trash now, we don't need people returning cans. Remove 10 cents on the cost of canned beverages up front.

Are you trying put more trash this city's streets? One thing you never really see lying around in Detroit is anything that has deposit on it and that is largely thanks to deposit law. The redempetion rate is 97%, if any thing the should be expanded to include bottle water and juices

[DetroitPole]

Nope. Wrong. There is nothing "meta" about this. We're not all cogs. We're not living in the Matrix. There is no vast conspiracy. The universe is indifferent. There is absolutely no excuse to literally tear someone else's property, be it an individual, corporation or the state's, to pieces and ruin someone else's community. Thieves have been around since time-immemorial, and these simply are among the worst. Not everything is an existential dilemma. Some things indeed are right and wrong.

[Thames]

Thieves have been around since time-immemorial, ...Not everything is an existential dilemma.

Exactly.

Add to that; bodily harm and/or death is an occupational hazard for a thief. It comes with the territory.

[RickBeall]

You can wring your hands, but I wouldn't mind if they shot more copper theives.

[Autoracks]

And our grand old city yet remains on life support...

Our city remains on life support. I think about it all the time. The autos were on life support too not so long ago. They had lots of retiree commitments and were paying high wages/health insurance. The answer for them was buyouts, meltdown, reorganization, govt intervention. The problems the city face are sort of overwhelming. For starters, for crime to go down people need jobs. Thats all well and good but literacy, employability, etc, stand in the way. Say the stats are close to correct and 40% of Detroit residents are functionally illiterate. Supposedly a little under half of 700K can hardly read. Even if they could, literacy is hardly something you put on a resume. Its hard to find work nowadays regardless of your qualifications.

Regardless... poor guy was probably stealing copper to pay for his textbooks. Ukno how much books cost right? RIP

[Django]

English has it.

A simple theif and someone who took someones life over something worth no more than money I assume.

At what point do we evolve? Im trying.

I hope I picked up what you were layin down correctly English.

[gnome]

A copper thief doesn't steal copper, he steals a person's sense of control, of self-worth, of vunerability. Come home and the copper-thieves have fed on the house down the street - or next door - and a man worries that he will be next. He worries for his wife, his life. He buys a gun and prays not to use it.

and then he does.


A copper-thief steals a man's hope. That's worth much more than money, because a city is built on hope. Hope is tomorrow. You steal a city's tomorrows and few friends will show up at your funeral.

[Huggybear]

Greek - but point taken?

Pardon my use of Latin, which used to be the language of choice.

[English]

Cool that some people feel me & others don't on this. We all have different views.

DetroitPole, if you think you're not a cog, I envy you. I've known that I was my entire life. The serenity prayer sums up what I believe. On an individual level, one ought to retain one's dignity, integrity, and morality -- and refuse to destroy beautiful buildings or even ugly/nonfunctional ones via scrapping.

However, the entire context of our city being scrapped is bound in multiple complexities. There is the very specific recent history of Detroit. But there are also changes in the national & global markets that, as many folks have mentioned upthread, make this more lucrative than, say, selling crack might have been in the 1980s.

Indeed, there is a certain variety of scrapper who likely believes they are far more moral than a drug pusher. I know [[and am related to a few) drug dealers of the past, but I do not have any access to the mindset of scrappers. But having heard pushers rationalize their choice of profession, as a writer, I can almost hear the thoughts of someone stripping out copper wire or pipes [[which, after all, is kinda semi-skilled work; I would just mess it all up if I tried): 1) I'm either unwilling or unable to obtain legit work [[e.g., prior felony conviction, tight market), 2) I'm not bashing people in the head or sticking 'em up for cash, and 3) just look around -- this city has been a festering hole for a half century -- no one will care.

The rationale for scrapping is amoral, wrong, and extremely short-sighted. Not sure that I'm with DetroitPole that it's the most morally reprehensible thing that I've ever heard of, not in a society where there are a few folks who think it's OK to kill kids and will defend it if it's their son on trial for murder, and another few who think it's fair game to rape 80 year old widows during a home invasion. But even evil, sick people have their self-justifications: blood is thicker than water. The spoils of war.

Anyway, that's where I sit here in the cheap seats. Buildings are destroyed, a dude who was at least knowledgeable enough to know where ish was in a building is dead, and another dude will never be the same.

[Dieseldog]

Not all "scrappers" are copper thieves. I for one wont trespass or steal for metal. Unless an owner of a building or house asks me to remove it I wont touch it. Most of the scrap I haul is from the curb or at an illegal dump site. Is this not helping urban blight? And as for the licensing If you collect metal for profit in city limits you need a license from the city. it looks like a small car plate. The yard I turn my scrap into also requires my social for tax purposes. Once again If the laws already in place were enforced this may cut way back on the problem. I know many many scrappers like myself who do their business legitimately. Please don't confuse scrappers with thieves. we are small businessmen not crackheads stealing for our habits. A thief is a thief weather it is a DVD player or copper piping.

[wolverine]

Are you trying put more trash this city's streets? One thing you never really see lying around in Detroit is anything that has deposit on it and that is largely thanks to deposit law. The redempetion rate is 97%, if any thing the should be expanded to include bottle water and juices

Disagree. No deposit where I live. And it's very hard to redeem scrap metal here. The alleys are ridiculously clean, even in areas where some abandonment exists. It's because we have street and alley cleaning service. along with garbage pickup.

If you don't have these very basic services in Detroit, that's really a separate problem. Whether someone throws a can in the garbage or recycle bin is not much of a problem either. It will eventually get sorted out recycled and not end up landfilled The point of removing the bottle deposit is to be fair across the boards. Any piece of metal can't be redeemed for cash.

[Gistok]

A copper thief doesn't steal copper, he steals a person's sense of control, of self-worth, of vunerability. Come home and the copper-thieves have fed on the house down the street - or next door - and a man worries that he will be next. He worries for his wife, his life. He buys a gun and prays not to use it.

and then he does.


A copper-thief steals a man's hope. That's worth much more than money, because a city is built on hope. Hope is tomorrow. You steal a city's tomorrows and few friends will show up at your funeral.

Wow... very poignant.... and well stated...

[[Alright who's using the REAL Gnome's Login ID without permission??)

[RickBeall]

I like gnome's post too! Well spoken.

[bartock]

Pardon my use of Latin, which used to be the language of choice.

I know what the word means, and it still makes no sense in your context.

[bartock]

Greek - but point taken?

Then perhaps you could explain the use of the word hubris in that context.

[313WX]

Ouch - dude, you need to tone it down a bit. We all have problems, but use a bit of hubris.

Yeah, I'm not sure what you mean here either.

Do you mean pride?

If so, then pride about what? Pride in the human race?

[stromberg2]

Very nice, Gnome and English, very well stated.

Stromberg2

[Jimaz]

I know little about construction. Are there any practical ways to avoid copper theft? Would a substitute for copper pipe like PVC or something work as well?

[Whitehouse]

I know little about construction. Are there any practical ways to avoid copper theft? Would a substitute for copper pipe like PVC or something work as well?

Sometimes it is, but PVC works quite bad as a lightning conductor....

[wolverine]

I know little about construction. Are there any practical ways to avoid copper theft? Would a substitute for copper pipe like PVC or something work as well?

It [[legally) cannot be used for piping hot water where it's under pressure. Though you could probably use CPVC if codes permit.

[gazhekwe]

I just heard an interesting story. A man and wife moved into their brand new house around this time of year. It was cold, so the man went to the thermostat and turned on the furnace. It didn't warm up so he turned it up a little more, still no results after a reasonable time. Went down the basement, and the new furnace had been stolen. This was in the early 1950s. This really caught my attention because it seems like a recent problem.

Also, it jogged my memories of what I call "the HUD scandal." In the early 70s I handled an ADC caseload, first on the east side 6 - 7 Mile and Nevada area, then on the west side, Livernois to Schaefer, south of 6 Mile. There was a push to get ADC families into vacated HUD houses. Nearly every one was stripped and the pitiful $500 lifetime emergency fund had to cover making them habitable. I used to wonder where the law was while all this was going on.