I work with a lot of scrap and scrappers. they did this at the local scrapyard, and indeed they stopped accepting anything from anyone without a city-issued business license.
now the tweakers sell directly to scrappers with a business license, that take a 25-50% cut.
That's how it works in the UK, following too many thefts of copper cables for railways which are at least one, maybe two orders of magnitude more expensive to repair than highway barriers.
You must show identification when selling scrap metal, and the scrapyard must record that for a period.
Yep, they only care about crimes that earn them bonuses either financially or materially. And drug crime lets the courts rake in fines and fees which filter down to cops too and many police also seize all sorts of material goods that disappear both legally and illegaly into their personal possessions.
The numbers just don't seem big enough. Repair costs of $62,000 over two years in LA and Ventura counties - an area with 10 million people. The savings from 100% enforcement at the scrapyard level would pay for what, one full time employee inspector for the state of California?
It would be cheaper all round to add a $100 yearly registration fee to every scrapyard, rather than give them an extra compliance burden.
The guardrails aren't the only things being stolen for scrap, they're just what the article focuses on. There's a link included to an article about streetlight copper theft which probably costs even more, and another about telecom theft.
That's all there is to it. All these scum know they are buying stolen items, but they do it anyway. Same thing for catalytic converters and copper stolen from just about anywhere.
Drop long prison sentences and massive fines on these people, and this problem would vanish in short order.
convolvatron|5 months ago
now the tweakers sell directly to scrappers with a business license, that take a 25-50% cut.
Symbiote|5 months ago
You must show identification when selling scrap metal, and the scrapyard must record that for a period.
octo888|5 months ago
sneak|5 months ago
In addition to basically no consequences for US police breaking the law, there are actually zero consequences to them not doing their jobs.
AngryData|5 months ago
dmurray|5 months ago
It would be cheaper all round to add a $100 yearly registration fee to every scrapyard, rather than give them an extra compliance burden.
gs17|5 months ago
According to https://laist.com/news/criminal-justice/la-city-council-copp... :
> In the [2023] fiscal year, that number skyrocket to a staggering 6,842 cases, with repair costs exceeding well over $20 million.
AmVess|5 months ago
Drop long prison sentences and massive fines on these people, and this problem would vanish in short order.
brookst|5 months ago
What you can do is make it illegal to buy particular materials, and then the intent to break that law becomes obvious.
bregma|5 months ago
squigz|5 months ago
Fines, sure. But "long prison sentences"?
> this problem would vanish in short order.
Anyway that's worked well for drug abuse/sales, so it should probably work here too