The rampant theft of copper wire plaguing public places in Los Angeles—darkening streets and sidewalks where we need light most, adding to the public’s sense of lawlessness in the city—has created one of Southern California’s most vexing policing problems.
But there’s plenty of normal, workaday crime in one of the world’s greatest and most complex metropolises. Just as when there is a rash of other new and then copycat crimes, such as catalytic converter thefts from under automobiles, it can be hard for the Los Angeles Police Department to turn on a dime and prioritize tracking precious-metal thieves rather than burglars and muggers.
And what are police officers, anyway, commodity brokers? It’s the price hikes seen for precious metals in car parts and for formerly ordinary metals like copper, ubiquitous in electrical wiring, that has led to the demand that makes thieves practice their thievery. Hard to keep up with world markets.
Still, we’re sure that somehow, Chief Jim McDonnell’s best and brightest investigators are up to the task of, first, preventing criminals from breaking into street lights and stripping out the wire and, second, infiltrating the minor-league gangs that are planning the thefts and stopping them before they happen. After all, a force that can catch the Grim Sleeper serial killer can also catch bad guys who ipso facto have to do their work out on public streets.
What the situation does not require, as some are suggesting, is the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power creating its own internal police force. Department leaders are seeking a dedicated group of 20 to 50 sworn and armed officers with full arrest powers, in contrast to the unarmed private security guards the department currently uses to protect against theft.
Timothy O’Connor, executive director for the Los Angeles Office of Public Accountability, is appropriately worried about long-term cost creep. The overhead involved in setting up a whole new police agency is clearly inefficient.
L.A. already has a police department: the LAPD. The officers there are highly compensated, with generous retirement packages, and the department has a budget in the billions. It can and should prioritize the problem of copper theft.