Cops Arrest Alleged Copper Thief At Vacant Foreclosed Home

In Ferndale, Michigan, the Royal Oak Daily Tribune reports:

• A man paroled from prison last month was charged ... with breaking into a Ferndale house and stealing about 100 pounds of copper pipes. Larry L. Flood, 32, of Detroit, was arrested after neighbors called police a day earlier to report a suspicious man at a recently foreclosed house ..., police said.

[...]

• "The suspect had taken all of the copper pipes out of the basement," [Ferndale Detective John ] Thull said. "He didn't use any cutting tools, he just twisted the pipes around with his hands until the pipes broke." Police have seen a sharp rise in recent years of thieves stealing all kinds of metal they can sell to scrap dealers. The price of copper has jumped more than 300 percent to about $3.50 a pound over the past four years. The theft of aluminum, and especially copper, is a nationwide problem. Thieves have pried copper loose from public utility wires, cell phone towers, air conditioners and even massive electrical transformers at power company substations.

For more, see Man stole copper from foreclosed home, cops say (Suspect was recently released from prison).

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