Officer.com Police Blogs & Podcasts

Tim Dees
Editor-in-Chief
Officer.com

Tim’s excellent adventures find him in Las Vegas this week for the annual conference of the International Association of Property Crime Investigators. After this, Tim gets to stay home for a while, which both he and his dog will appreciate. When I was a cop, I used to think that I’d really enjoy a job where I traveled a lot. I do really enjoy my job, but the traveling part is losing its charm after most of the last three weeks on the road.

I hadn’t heard of the IAPCI until a couple of months ago, when I saw the announcement for this conference. I’ve only been through the first day, but so far I’d say that this is one of the better police professional conferences I’ve attended. The presentations have been fresh and interesting. Not all of the attendees are cops–quite a few are from private industry, like AT&T, Wal-Mart, Walgreen’s, and Mervyn’s. But this is an area where private industry has as much or more to gain from pooling resources as do the cops, so it’s a happy marriage.

There is quite a bit of information that I won’t share here, being aware that this blog is as accessible to cops as it is to crooks. Most of the thieves involved in these cases already know the tricks I’ve heard about, but I’m not going to contribute to their body of knowledge if I can help it. The cops can try to attend next year’s conference.

One of the topics discussed today is the international epidemic of metal theft. Running down metal thieves, which involves spending a lot of time in junkyards and recycling centers, is not one of law enforcement’s more enviable jobs. It’s often dirty work, and the cases that come from it usually don’t make it into the major felony column when prosecuted. But this is very critical stuff.

One of the most common types of metal theft is when electrical or telephone cable is stolen, burned to remove the insulation and sheathing, and then sold for the copper wire that remains. Copper goes for around $3.50 per pound these days. If a thief manages to cut out a 50-foot section of 1500-pair cable, each pair consisting of two 24 gauge wires, he nets 183 lbs. of copper, or about $642 (one of the things I learned today is how to calculate this). What you are left with is two cable ends, each dangling from adjacent utility poles, and a pile of extremely annoyed citizens who have no phone service.

The metal thieves will also cut into fiber-optic cables in the belief that the cables also contain copper. The fiber is pretty much worthless when reduced to its basic components, so they’re disappointed. But a single fiber-optic cable might carry telephone, cable television, and data for 20,000 or more customers, and that doesn’t differentiate to exclude vital infrastructure like public safety services, hospitals, and airports.

Kyle Rosene from AT&T did a major portion of the metal theft presentation today. AT&T does quite a bit of law enforcement training in this area, and has literature, a DVD, and a web site, as well as a 24-hour hotline to assist law enforcement in these investigations. I’m not going to include that contact information for the same reasons I referenced above, but if you went to send an e-mail to me at editor@officer.com, using an official law enforcement agency e-mail account, I’ll reply with the basic details, and Kyle can get you the rest.

Another session was devoted to counterfeit merchandise. This is very much an international problem, as both the real and the counterfeit goods are often manufactured offshore. People who buy counterfeits are usually looking for a bargain, to get an expensive, status-bearing label for a fraction of the retail price.

While it might be a stretch for some people to feel sympathy for the likes of Chanel, Rolex, and Abercrombie & Fitch, these companies are as entitled to the fruits of their labors as anyone else. The finished product represents years of costly design, building confidence in a brand, and marketing. The counterfeit not only dilutes the value of the product and the label, but can cause damage to the company’s reputation and viability when consumers obtain a fake that they believe is real, and find it performing badly.

I know several cops with fake Rolex watches that they show off and brag about. They’ll let people (usually woman people) they want to impress believe that the watch is real, so they’ll appear well-to-do and successful. They’ll tell their friends that the watch is fake, so they won’t be thought of as too trendy or extravagant (or worse yet, on the take). Most don’t ever consider that their use and ownership actively contributes to an ongoing criminal enterprise, which they would find abhorrent in another context.

On a completely unrelated note, the Iraqi soccer team won their first Asian Cup championship a couple of weeks back. The celebration didn’t go so well in the team’s home country, where suicide bombers went to Paradise by driving their explosives-laden cars into crowds. Back here in the U.S., the scene was different. In Dearborn, MI, home of the largest community of Iraqis in America, people drove around in cars and trucks with Iraq flags waving, singing songs of their country, and generally having a good time without harming anyone. Contrast this to the new American custom of celebrating the championship of a local sports team by taking to the streets, overturning and burning other people’s cars, and throwing rocks through display windows. I’m proud to be an American, but sometimes disappointed in some of my countrymen.