Nearly every week, phone companies like Frontier Communications are confronted with service outages that turn out to be more than just an errant gunshot that disrupted 911 service for hundreds of residents in Moses Lake, Washington.  When repair crews arrive to find no cabling to repair, they realize it’s yet another case of copper theft — a problem plaguing economically challenged areas across the country.

Unfortunately for phone companies, copper theft remains a misdemeanor in many states, including West Virginia, one of the hardest hit by wire thieves that literally strip phone lines right off the phone poles as they drive by in the dead of night.

Scrap copper wire

An employee with Frontier Communications reported that on June 25 he received reports that the phone lines were out for residents along Paddle Creek Road near Fort Gay, W.V.

It apparently took two days for the employee to discover, on June 27, 800 feet of phone cable had been removed from a wooded area along the road. The value of the cable was estimated at $10,000.  The annoyance value for customers left without basic phone service?  Potentially more.

In St. Albans, nearly 400 Frontier customers were stripped of their landline service Friday when vandals cut a cable in a possible theft attempt.  Frontier said the most vulnerable cables are often in the most remote and rural locations, and this cable qualified, requiring more than a day to repair and restore service.

But the impact of copper theft can be greater than phone service knocked out for a few hundred residents.  In Kanawha County, West Virginia’s Department of Agriculture offices were left idle when the second copper theft in two months left their phone lines dead.

“We’re at a standstill,” said Gus Douglass, commissioner of agriculture. “It’s kind of ridiculous.”

[flv width=”480″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WSAZ Huntington Copper Thieves Dep Ag 6-28-11.mp4[/flv]

WSAZ-TV in Huntington, W.V. covered the second straight outage of phone service for the West Virginia Dept. of Agriculture in two months.  Copper thieves do strike twice in the same place.  (2 minutes)

Frontier has complained that because copper thefts are often treated as a misdemeanor, offenders are skating with a small fine and little or no jail time.  That makes repeat offenses likely, and risks for those just getting into the copper racket low.

Thieves are reselling the stolen copper for money.  Copper has become a hot commodity, and thieves often earn hundreds, if not thousands of dollars, for a night’s work.

Frontier believes strengthening criminal penalties for copper thefts will do more to deter would-be thieves more than installing surveillance equipment.

Kanawha County Prosecutor Mark Plants seems to agree.  His office is now charging offenders under a little-used state code that makes it a felony to disrupt telephone service.  A felony conviction can bring substantial fines and multi-year prison sentences, especially for repeat offenders.

“There is a push […] towards maximizing a prison sentence for all of these criminals,” Plants told WSAZ-TV.

[flv width=”480″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WSAZ Huntington Copper Thieves 6-29-11.mp4[/flv]

WSAZ-TV follows up on the copper theft outage that plagued the West Virginia Dept. of Agriculture with news of an arrest, and a demand for stronger penalties for copper thieves.  (2 minutes)