Thieves caught on camera stealing copper wires on Thanksgiving
While brazen copper wire thieves continued to target the Harbor Gateway community during the Thanksgiving holiday, their latest string of thefts were all caught on camera.
"Our community right now is just being ravaged by this group that's stealing copper,"
The cameras captured the suspects using a grinder to cut several wires from poles, before putting the copper in a shopping cart and walking away. A neighbor said the grinder caused sparks to fly into the air during the late afternoon.
"They're stealing copper out of anything and everything,"
David Matthews with the Harbor-Gateway Chamber of Commerce said the thieves have taken their thefts a step further, causing around $500,000 in damage to one building.
"They're going in and cutting the power off the power poles and waiting for the backup alarms to go off," he said. "They go in and they steal whatever they want to take. This building in particular was half a million dollars in damage."
In the month before thieves broke into a nearby building through a nursery.
"They actually took the LADWP transformers, stole all the copper went into the building and ransacked that building," Matthews said.
More recently, thieves targeted a railroad crossing down the street, according to Matthews.
"They deactivated all the crossing signals on two specific streets, stealing the copper," Matthews added. "They're stealing copper out of anything and everything."
Tuesday morning, a video shows a thief falling from a power pole at 2:15 a.m. before continuing to load the car.
"The group went up to the AT&T poles and cut the wires out and stole 600 pounds of copper," Matthews said. "These guys just don't care."
Matthews said that he's thankful for the Los Angeles Police Department and LA County Sheriff's Department, as well as others, for working together to catch the thieves.
"There have been some arrests, but the group that's doing it are still on the street," he said.
He implored the thieves to stop the thefts and to leave the community.
"Stop. We don't want you in the community," Matthews said.