September 2011 - Parks & Recreation - 24

Who, What, Where & how Around the Parks

SPECIAL REPORT

The Things They Steal
Park thieves prefer copper but will take any other metal-
at great costs to taxpayers.
By Richard J. Dolesh

With considerable
effort, thieves in Boston,
Massachusetts, dug out a
sculpture of footprints to
steal the metal fillings.

W

hether it is the lingering effects of the recession or just a nasty uptick in bad behavior among thieves specializing in
construction materials, there has been an
astonishing increase in the theft of metal
from public parks in the past three years. Many public park
and recreation agencies across the country are reporting the
highest level of metal theft from parks that they have ever seen.
At the going rate of $4 per pound, copper tops the list of metals being systematically ripped out of park buildings and structures. Still, no metal appears to be safe: Bronze, aluminum, steel,
stainless steel, and wrought-iron have been wrenched from park
fixtures and buildings and sold to scrap recyclers. Thieves have
stolen metal downspouts, aluminum planks from bleachers,
backflow preventers from irrigation systems, bronze memorial
plaques, pool ladders, park signs, water fountains, fire-fighting
nozzles, and even the 300-pound bronze bust of a city father.
The losses have been in the millions of dollars per year and going forward they could exceed $10 million annually, according
to park administrators.

22	 Parks & Recreation

SEPTEMBER 2011

www.NRPA .ORG

A Widespread Phenomenon
In many park systems today, no metal is safe, no matter how securely it is bolted, welded, epoxied, or fastened by park maintenance workers. Thieves have used metal saws to cut the middle
out of bleacher sections, not even wasting time to unbolt the entire plank seats from the base of the bleacher. Like heavy-metal woodchucks, thieves have even burrowed through the guts
of rooftop air-conditioning units to steal the copper condensing coils. Metal thieves have ripped up roofing from park structures, knocked holes into concrete block walls to get to copper
wiring and plumbing, and tied the ends of electrical wires from
athletic light standards to the bumpers of trucks, driving away
to strip the wires out of the poles. " We have lost miles of wire
from light poles, " says Greg Bayor, director of Baltimore City
Recreation and Parks.
Nor do thefts occur only in the middle of the night. Agencies
report daylight thefts of chain-link fence, wiring, and fixtures
from ball field lights (by thieves in a bucket truck, no less), and
in one jaw-dropping example of audacity, the theft of an entire
set of bleachers across the street from the home of a Richmond,



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