Metal theft: Local farmers hit hard; what will legislators do?

The crooks weren’t done.

“They’ve been back since and stole more, and been back again and stole more,” said Sartain. “I put out game cameras to try to catch them and they stole them, too.”

Many Madison County farmers can sympathize with Sartain. Metal prices have soared during a bad economy. And thieves have developed their own underground market, stealing whatever they can grab a — air conditioners, copper wiring, house plumbing — and selling it to salvage yards.

Vacant homes, churches, chicken houses — any structure that’s not always occupied is particularly vulnerable.

“When you get to a point where a church can’t get insurance, or their insurance has gone up exponentially because of the thief on the road, that makes this an issue that’s got to be dealt with,” said Rep. Alan Powell, who represents the northern half of Madison County.

Madison County’s Frank Ginn, the state senator whose district includes his home county, agrees with Powell. And he supports Senate Bill 321, proposed by Sen. Renee Unterman, which he said should reach the Senate floor this week or next.

“I believe her bill will be passed in some shape or form,” said Ginn. “It’s such a statewide problem we’re dealing with and it’s not just a rural or urban problem. Legislation was passed on this a couple of years ago and it’s just not getting the job done.”

SB 321 would focus on scrap yards and recyclers who purchase metal. Ginn said it would require a photo ID, a thumbprint and a mailing address from those selling metal to scrap yards. But the primary change would be a delayed payment system. A person selling scrap metal couldn’t get quick cash. Instead, they’d have to wait perhaps 10 to 14 days to receive compensation. Ginn said he’s pushing for a cash voucher instead of a check. He said a person selling metal could bring the voucher back to the salvage center and get cash. Ginn said he doesn’t want to prohibit people from making cash transactions, noting that some people’s bank is “their front overall’s pocket.”

Powell said a delayed payment system makes sense, establishing a paper trail that would help criminal investigators.

“The gist of the thing is that the vendors that are buying this (scrap metal) couldn’t pay on the spot,” said Powell. “They’d have to send the person a check as far as three weeks out. That would give people a chance, if they’d had something stolen, to start tracking it down. I’ve analyzed this thing. I know there’s some push back coming from the vendors who say they ought to be able to pay cash and from some of the people selling. But this has grown into such a major issue and a major problem. And it’s costing legal citizens a tremendous amount of money. I’ve heard from a lot of folks, not just farmers. People who may have an old car behind barn, plows, air conditioners, plumbing ripped out of homes.”

Powell said that new laws could cause some inconvenience, but he said that’s the price of addressing a criminal epidemic. He related the proposed change to laws on over-the-counter cold medicine sales in recent years, legislation which addressed meth production.

“When I get an antihistamine I just have to ask for it and sign to get it as opposed to the meth dealers going out there and buying it up and making more potent drugs,” he said.

Sheriff Kip Thomas said the problem is widespread and not just in Madison County. He said 85 chicken houses were hit in 12 northeast Georgia counties in 2011, including 19 in Madison County. Another 1,000 air conditioner units were stolen in the 12-county are last year.

“We’re talking about millions of dollars,” said Thomas of the damages. “A small chicken house is anywhere from 10,000 to 15,000 if they yank the wires out.”

Catching scrap metal thieves is tough, too. Wiring doesn’t come with serial numbers.

“You got to catch them in the act or they have to admit I took this from so and so’s house,” said Thomas. “There’s nothing really on the books to cover it. Once the wire is stripped out and is bare, we can’t prove where it came from. We’re blind on that.”

The sheriff said he’d like to see the state require permits on the sale of scrap metal.

“I think they need a permit to sell it,” said Thoms. “That’s putting more on us. But that would cut down on a whole lot of it. If they have to come to the sheriff’s office to take any kind of scrap wire to the recycling place. If they don’t have a permit, the recycling place isn’t supposed take it then.

If they do take it, and we find it, then we can take it as stolen property.”

South Carolina recently passed a permit law on metal sales.

“It must be working cause they seem to have run everybody down here,” said Thomas.

Madison County farmer Dennis Moon said he’s eager to see something happen.

“Farm Bureau is pushing to get a bill passed with more penalties and fines,” said Moon. “It’s mostly misdemeanors now. The law is not nearly tough enough to have any repercussions if they get caught. Law enforcement has a tough time making a case for where it came from because there is no ID for the products they’re stealing.”

Moon said the structural damage is costly, but so is the down time. Crooks generally hit chicken houses between flocks of birds. If it takes two weeks to replace the wiring, that’s a two week delay in getting more birds. Moon, who had a house stripped of wiring, said it costs him $2,000 to $3,000 a flock for such a delay.

Moon said many south Georgia farmers are having their irrigations stripped by crooks, but it’s not just farmers who are getting robbed.

“It’s not just agriculture,” he said. “It’s Georgia power, the rail industry. It’s the auto industry being stripped of catalytic converters, the air conditioners in houses. Insurance companies are being put out of business … Either our premiums are going to go up tremendously or they’re going to go out of business, because it’s killing them.”

Moon said the thieves have no conscience.

“They’re stealing everything they can out of cemeteries, the brass name plates and vases, wire after a funeral,” he said.

Other Madison County farmers echo Moon’s sentiment.

George Smith was hit about six months ago.

“They came in and stripped all the wire out of my 40 by 500 foot chicken houses,” said Smith. “And the sheriff’s investigators said they might have gotten between $600 and $800 for the copper wire. Thank goodness we had theft insurance, but it cost $10,235 to get it replaced.”

Jerry Smith said he had a rude awakening when he tried to flip the lights on in his chicken house last summer.

“They’d been in there and started at the switch box and they cut all the wire lose from the switchbox and cut all the wire going to the tunnel fans,” said Smith. “They got three houses and we watched it for a week or so, and they come back and got number four. They know where you’re at, when you leave home, when the lights is cut out, when you go to bed. I mean, they’re professionals at it.”

Father and son Troy and George Chandler have both been targeted by metal thieves.

“They had pretty much vandalized more than they had stolen,” said George Chandler. “They just cut it in different places and tried to pull all they could pull. But because my house is older, it was stapled to the ceiling versus being in conduit, where they could easily pull it. And they didn’t have any luck getting a great amount. Well, they pretty much vandalized the whole house. They cut it so many places on the ceiling that we had to go back and tear that out and put in all new wire.”

Chandler said he felt he messed up by potentially tipping off the crooks that he was out of birds.

“I had left my doors open on my chicken houses and that was a mistake,” said Chandler. “That lets them know that you’re out of chickens.”

But he said chicken farmers worry that somebody is tipping off thieves about when birds are out of the buildings.

“We don’t know if there’s a connection with the catching crew or possibly a cleanout crew, but we don’t feel like our cleanout boys do that,” said Chandler. “You’d have to get out and do a lot of riding around to know who was out of chickens.”

Chicken farmers say the issue must be addressed at scrap metal yards.

“If I was running a salvage place and a man come day after day with copper wire, do you think I’d believe for a minute that that was his?” asked Jerry Smith. “What does common sense tell a man? Those people don’t care. They’re getting filthy rich at it. Every time I suffer a loss, or some other man does, they’re making money.”

Sen. Ginn said scrap metal dealers who are trying to act legitimately face troubles too. For instance, he said he talked with a scrap metal dealer in another county who had someone come in with numerous vases from a cemetery. The dealer said he could have turned the seller away, but he said he wanted to see the vases returned to the cemetery. So he gave the man $800 for the vases. He said the sheriff’s department picked up the vases, but then the dealer was out $800.

“A delayed payment gives scrap metal dealers the opportunity to call in law enforcement if something they receive seems fishy without them having to pay out of pocket,” said Ginn. “They can call in law enforcement to do the investigation.”

Many recognize the metal theft problem as an extension of the country’s drug issues. Sheriff Thomas said people are often seeking money for drugs when the swipe metals.

Powell said it’s a sad situation.

“I wish the economy was better,” he said. “And I wish people weren’t doping and selling their souls and stealing everything in the world to feed their habit.”