5 August 2009

Police Wrap - 5 August

| johnboy
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1. Good old copper pipe:

    ACT Policing is seeking witnesses to a burglary at a building site in Phillip in which around $10,000 worth of copper cable and pipe was stolen.

    It is believed that offenders gained entry to the three-story construction site, on the corner of Shea Street and Athllon Drive in Phillip, between the hours of 5pm on Saturday August 1, and 7am on Monday, August 3.

    Six-metre lengths of copper pipe and an amount of cabling was stolen from the location. Police believe that offenders may have used an angle grinder to cut the material up before removing it.

    Police are appealing for any witnesses who may have seen or heard suspicious persons, vehicles or activity around the construction site between the hours of 5pm Saturday and 7am Monday to contact Crime Stoppers.

2. Jamo Ram Raid!

    ACT Policing is seeking witnesses to an attempted aggravated burglary at the Jamison Centre in Macquarie today (August 5).

    Around 12.10am a security guard was conducting a patrol of the Queen Elizabeth II Family Centre in Carruthers Street, Curtin when his white Toyota Yaris work vehicle was stolen.

    Around 12.35am police located the Toyota abandoned with its lights left on in Noala Street, Aranda. A number of items had been stolen including a portable radio, a personal digital assistant, a number of swipe cards and the driver’s wallet and sports bag.

    At 2.30am police were called to the Liquor Land store at the Jamieson Centre on Bowman Street in Macquarie where police observed a white Holden Commodore, confirmed as stolen. It had been used in an attempt to reverse into the front window of the store. Metal bollards had prevented the vehicle from hitting the store window. Inside the Commodore police located a number of items stolen earlier from the Toyota.

    Police are appealing for anyone who may have witnessed suspicious persons or activity near the Queen Elizabeth II Family Centre, Curtin, or the Liquor Land store, Macquarie, overnight to contact Crime Stoppers.

If you can help police contact Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000 or online.

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Danman, you don’t store piles of base metal on a building site, because you can’t do anything with a one tonne pile of base metal copper on that building site.

$10,000 for a roughly 1000kg of copper bullion turns into $10,000 for 100m(50kg) of copper piping because well, copper piping’s value comes from being an industrially manufactured good instead of being a pile of copper bricks.

Thieves don’t need to be bodybuilders or well organised to shift 50kg of piping, its just awkward since its in the form of hollow tubes.

I’d speculate that the thieves are not drug addicted losers, but in fact well organised, possibly an inside job ?

Just imagine how much equipment you would need to shift and transport $10,000 worth of copper..

I don’t think a junkie is just going to WIWO with it…

They certainly would not have the means to transport that amount of raw product.

Raw copper bullion is worth around US$8600 a tonne at the moment, I’d love to see a junkie hulk that out of a building site.

p1:

If you were being a medium-term speculator, and instead of getting rid of the evidence of your crime, were warehousing your immense pile of criminally-acquired copper, you’re probably known as ‘a possible next target’ to shorter-term planning thieves.
(Well guarded warehouses with low apparent turnover will pique curiosity)

p1 said :

If these copper thieves were better capitalised, they could afford to save up the stolen copper and only sell a couple of times a year while prices are good, ensuring constant work year round while maximising income…

Yeah, and if they were smart enough to do that, they might be gainfully employed and not drug-addicted losers who were drains on society. Your average criminal isn’t too good at long-term thinking. Or any thought beyond “where’s my next hit coming from?”

great security guard, leaves keys and valuables in the car. It would be interesting trying to explain that one to the boss lol

Incidence of copper theft almost matches the spot price of copper. (ie: market price comes down, fewer people steal copper)

If these copper thieves were better capitalised, they could afford to save up the stolen copper and only sell a couple of times a year while prices are good, ensuring constant work year round while maximising income…

VYBerlinaV8_the_one_they_all_copy5:10 pm 05 Aug 09

Having lived in an area with lots of residential construction, I am amazed more stuff is not stolen from building sites. Most tradies seem to leave their stuff lying around everywhere, and leave buildings unlocked.

The guys next door to us had appliances stolen while they were building because the builder/tradies didn’t bother locking the almost completed house!

A 100m length of 22mm diameter piping at 0.91mm metal thickness is only 48kg of piping.

But as Jb says, seeing as you’re buying stolen goods at less than market rate, savings go straight to the bottom line, and any evidence of your crime gets buried in the walls (and can’t be traced).
Downside is that now criminals know that you have a pile of copper piping, you can either bury it in the walls ASAP, or lose to the conga-line of construction materials theft.

And think of the savings straight to the bottom line if you were going to have to otherwise buy that copper for your own construction project.

Incidence of copper theft almost matches the spot price of copper. (ie: market price comes down, fewer people steal copper)
But as copper cable and piping costs more than base copper material (but is always able to be sold when there’s construction going on or easily shipped to somewhere nearby that it is going to be used), while if you were just buying lumps of refined copper that $10,000 would represent something like a tonne of base metal, but as deliverable construction-site product, that is a 100m coil of 22mm piping.

Woody Mann-Caruso3:38 pm 05 Aug 09

Wasn’t there an article a while back criticising the media for artificially inflating the price of copper? They had some metal merchant scratching his head at the figures they were quoting, saying copper wasn’t nearly as expensive as they claimed.

That Security guard has probably just been fired.
Also, the company involved, for allowing that kind of breakdown of basic procedures and being unable to secure even their own asset, has probably lost a site control contract or two.
That said, the QEII contract is probably available, other might be in the process of becoming available.

RE: Radio
A single unit can be bumped off a well-implemented trunked radio system, or if you have the serial number and sufficient technical knowhow you can tell it to dump all of its programming (ie: killswitch), bricking it instantly.
But there’s still a delay in getting that to happen.

It’s a sad indictment of Canberra in 2009 that the QE2 Family centre actually needs security. They do some terrific work in there but then again with our judicial system there no need for anyone to worry about being punished for thieving from anywhere is there? Our leaders are more concerned with jumping on the latest flavour of the month populist trend than actually fixing anything like a judicial system that’s seriously flawed.

“a number of swipe cards “

Let me guess, swipe cards that open high profile government buildings. I bet most of them had the names and address of sites written on them.

He should have waited for a pizza delivery boys car – Beer and Pizza any one?

Liquor Land Jamison’s eftpos had been down, maybe the “customer” just wanted his damn case of VB on eftpos.

Ha! The security guard left his car running with his wallet inside. Genius!

Probably used the security car as the get away vehicle. Radios between cars to coordinate, and anyone who sees the smash will see a security guard turn up and feel that things are under control…

Weaselburger12:44 pm 05 Aug 09

hahahaha funny about the security guard not locking his car too, Why didn’t he just use that car for the ram raid.

Weaselburger12:40 pm 05 Aug 09

don’t know but I hope metal recyclers in Mitchell arn’t too dodgy to not keep records

Is that $10k the cost of the pipe new, or what the theives will get when they “recycle” it?

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