American cities are experiencing widespread blackouts due to a bold and opportunistic crime wave. Thieves are removing copper wire from thousands of streetlights and selling it to scrap metal dealers for cash, The New York Times reports. The wiring typically fetches only a few hundred dollars, but blacked-out lights pose safety hazards to drivers and pedestrians, and are costing cities millions to repair. Metal theft often escalates with commodity prices. The economic woes post-pandemic created a heightened demand for metals like copper, which have elevated this form of street crime to unprecedented heights. Los Angeles City Council member Kevin de León recently pushed to create a task force to combat metal theft. In Mr. de León’s district alone, there were 6,900 cases of copper wire theft in the last fiscal year, up from just 600 cases five years ago. He said that some of the theft involved sophisticated criminal enterprises that recruit people struggling with addiction to do the stealing in exchange for drugs.
The Los Angeles Bureau of Street Lighting was unable to provide the total number of outages caused by wire theft among the 225,000 streetlights it operates citywide. The thefts come amid a feverish demand for copper and other metals. Copper, in particular, is at the heart of the evolving economy — a key component of battery-powered cars, modern electrical grids and the giant new data centers powering artificial intelligence and other technology. “The world can’t get enough copper,’’ said Karthik Valluru, global leader of Boston Consulting Group’s materials and process industries sector. There will be an estimated global shortage of as much as 10 million tons of copper over the next two years, Valluru said. Some Los Angeles officials have urged the city to focus on prosecuting the scrap companies purchasing the stolen material, not the people stealing the wiring who are more likely to be living in poverty and desperate for money. Mr. de León said the metal theft task force has been investigating the scrap companies, not just the street-level thieves. His office expects the task force to announce several arrests later this month.