The AM Forum

..Looting the transmitter site of 50 KW KSL radio in Salt Lake.

But why didn't they call the cops right away? *Somebody* is watching and remotely panning the camera.

http://www.ksl.com/?nid=148&sid=14920982

It says they were watching, in the article. My guess would be response time was the issue. No idea where their site is, but my recollection of that part of the country is that it's spread out. Had an opportunity to ride shotgun on patrol around Kemmerer with the Wyoming Highway Patrol back in the early 90s, one trooper for an area the size of the state of VT, basically. The reason has to do with population density (or lack thereof) as much as budgets.
 
Trap guns work well. Just make sure your on-call engineers are awake before heading to the site at 2AM. ;)

This is becoming more and more of an issue.... stealing copper... here we had candidates for the Darwin prize this week.... attempting to steal LIVE copper from an electrical substation...  justice dished out!


http://www.klfy.com/Global/story.asp?S=14346318 (http://www.klfy.com/Global/story.asp?S=14346318)

UNfortunately when they start lifting the grounds, the substation will fault and destroy itself and cause electrical damage to the customers on-line.
The metal reclaimers need to start checking credentials of someone 'off the street' arriving with spools of wire or, like the b'cast station, NEW copper.
Name, address, driver license etc.

there was probably nobody watching at the time, the PTZ movement is probably automatic as the newer DVR's and PTZ cameras have software that can recognize humans and track them, keeping them centered on the screen.

The scrap yards here in our area require drivers license/photo I.D. AND SS number before they will take your copper anything! Our shop regularly scraps out copper buss assemblies. The yards we use knows what they look like and who the company sends to deliver it. We've been called twice this year cause someone was trying to redeem assemblies they stole. Both perps got busted.

Happy endings.

;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D

I was told by someone who works in law enforcement that a business in a certain state had to disable the sound portion of their security surveillance system because in that state it was illegal to make sound recordings without the permission of everyone involved, and that includes burglars breaking and entering a building.  If they had kept the sound track on the video recording, that would have been enough to have the case thrown out of court and they might have even been liable for civil damages or criminal penalties. Also, in that state it is even illegal to have a clandestine sound recording device set up in your own home, and a parabolic microphone is unlawful, even when used for recording bird calls! That same person claimed that the little thumb-drive size flash memory audio recorders you can carry in your pocket that Radio Shack sells are technically illegal to possess.

I can see the motivation considering it's politicians writing these laws... ;)

T

Job security.  The Darwin Awards will be more difficult to judge if these things keep up.  Will have to start giving points for originality, voltage available at the time, etc.

Lowell, MA made it easy for thieves by requiring empty houses to be posted with a name and contact number. Now with all th copper being stolen by what often appears to be contractors, the city council is discussing to going back to the old way.

A couple of morons in the next town wound up like that photo during the last copper price escalation; it was also at a substation. It eliminates the bad genes from the pool ::)

Carl

That's true in most states and in Federal law too. It goes to an expectation of privacy. When you are out of doors, you have not expectation that no one will see you (video) but do have an expectation no one will hear your conversation(s), audio.

But inside your own house or business?  Expectation of privacy on the part of trespassers and thieves pre-empts the expectation of the property owner to be secure in his belongings on his own property?

Things don't make sense anymore. Remember that episode in IA or OH a few years back where a farmer was burgled several times and finally set up a 'front door activated shotgun'. Unfortunately, it didn't kill the repeat thief, but only wounded him. When he recovered, he sued the farmer -- and won. The farmer -- the victim of the crime, remember -- lost his farm and was forced to declare bankruptcy because the damn criminal was given more rights than he was.

I remember seeing that one somewhere.....................they got roasted

And the same audio thing recording security video on a school bus.

I was speaking generally. Each state and situation should be discussed with a lawyer. Can you ensure audio from outside your house will not be picked up and recorded? That's the kind of questions that will come up. Is it a one-party or two-party consent state, etc?

I've got a really huge soapbox on this subject, but let me do my best to bring it down to simple terms. When the victim has less rights than the perpetrator (criminal -- the lowlife that's trying to steal from, kill or ??? the victim) something is dreadfully wrong and needs to be fixed.

ldb
K5WLF

A lot of liberal courts are turning the laws upside down. Common sense seems to be in short supply today.

It could have been, and likely was, a trial by jury.

Maybe the same jury that awarded damages to the horribly burned and disfigured MacDonald's hot coffee customer a few years ago.

Yes, there is something unfair about these sort of verdicts.

Ohio has the "Castle Law". A man and his castle has a right to be secure. This extends to the property lines so ifn you are threatened anywhere on your property you have a right to defend yourself.

The only drawback so far has been a few cases where the homeowner had a difficult time proving criminal intent on the part of the perp. Fortunately the juries were sane!

Texas juries do not have much pity on the criminal vs. a law abiding citizen, but booby traps are illegal and would place the property defender in the status of criminal also. Audio recordings are permitted where a sign is posted, or, that is the practice. I've never seen a sign other than in English.

It's a whole new whirl out there now. Outlaws are bolder and nastier than ever before. Home invasions are getting more common. The wild west rises again.

The key to home security is to make the place univiting to the crook. His #1 directive is NOT to get caught. Everything else is secondary.  Thinking in those terms, we need to make our property a "mini compound." Crooks will take one look and move on to the easy hits down the street.

Over the last year there have been multiple break-ins around our formerly "peaceful" neighborhood. One guy lost $28K in a silver collection in broad daylight. There was a home invasion in CT with three murders that made national news. Enough was enough.  I added outside security cameras watching the whole house perimeter. I have motion detectors in a square perimeter on posts. A perp can't come within 30' of the house without an alarm sounding outside and in the house. I wired the whole house with the standard window, door and motion detectors, as well as hidden floor walk trips.  Monitored smoke alarms, and other saftey features were added in. The remote monitoring center uses redundent communications that I won't go into here. I added a visual camera doobell system. There are also 26 strategically placed flood lights outside programed to go off for various reasons, controlled by the main panel.

I also carry a 45ACP, 24/7, as well as other less lethal tools.  Actually, it's fun to think as a predator rather than as prey for a change.

The bottom line? I feel secure knowing this home and property are hard targets. I sleep well at night knowing the house is monitored and I am prepared with a plan. The key is to have a plan in the event of attacks of many kinds.  The payoff is when I see an obvious perp vehicle cruising the neighborhood looking for a hit. They are easy to spot. They just slow down, look at the perimeter cameras, motion detectors, floodlights and the security signs and drive on...

Surely a swat team could come in and take the house easily. But the average criminal will avoid this place - it becomes a last resort.  Maybe when times get better we can go back to normal life, but it's a tough whirl out there right now.

T

I believe most states have laws against setting booby-traps, and that's probably not a bad thing.  If the unconditional green light were given for booby traps, people would end up killed or injured for trivial, or imagined transgressions. Eventually it would be abused, and someone would attempt to get away with premeditated murder by setting it up to appear that the (trap) victim set off a booby trap on the innocent property owner's premises while trespassing or burgling.

Of greater concern to me is when someone breaks and enters a home or business and accidentally injures himself, and then wins a case against the property owner for damages.  I can't recall a specific incident off the top of my head, but I know I have heard news stories of this happening. For example, could I be held liable if someone broke into my ham shack while I was gone, and out of curiosity turned on the rig, and then managed to electrocute himself on the HV from my open-rack transmitter? What if I deliberately left the HV on overnight and a trespasser broke in while I was asleep?

There are "attractive nuisance" laws that could make someone liable, for example, if a young kid climbs an unprotected tower and falls off.  Again, probably not a bad thing, if interpreted with common sense (something that needs to be put on the endangered species act these days).  I have heard of a couple of cases where the property owner was held liable for negligence: in one case, a ladder was left in place after the owner had  repaired his roof, and a kid climbed up and fell off the roof.  In another, a trespasser fell into an open ditch while taking a short cut across the property after dark. But one case that stands out to to me as totally unreasonable, happened to a broadcast DXer or ham who lived on a farm out in the country and who had a beverage antenna strung across a field that was enclosed with a fence.  A lady decided to go horseback riding on the property without permission, and while she was crossing the field, collided with the antenna wire just at neck level, was knocked off the horse and severely injured herself.

As far as microphones and sound recording devices, I can't accept that the law has any jurisdiction over what kind of audio equipment I place inside my own home. That's nobody's business but mine. No-one has any expectation of privacy while inside another person's house. In fact, a readily available sound-activated security system records the audio and automatically dials the property owner's cell phone, then plays back the recording so he can determine if further action is needed. Besides recording bird calls, another legitimate use for a parabolic microphone is sniffing out line noise.  Some power companies use them to pinpoint the high frequency sizzle at a broken insulator or loose connection.  I think those outfits are sold for ham use, or at least  can be  constructed.  In fact, I have considered building one myself and have a small metal parabolic dish set aside for the purpose.

No self respecting perp would ever break into Buckwheat's place.

perp

Didn't they pass a law somewhere recently (under the Patriot act maybe?) that makes it illegal to turn your house into a fortress? They claim it could hamper law-enforcement serving a "no-knock" warrant, or hamper firefighters.  This specifically included making doors and windows too hard to break open from the outside.

Again, that's one I hope doesn't stand up in court.

Yep, only a cheap pimp would break into Buckwheat's.

This does make sense. Public safety comes first. What if you are inside passed out with a CO2 alarm at the monitoring station? They must be able to get to you.

That said, few "fortresses", never mind houses, can withstand the blows of a professional battering ram with three men behind it.  (or axes)

T

Don,
A door needs to be only strong enough to provide enough delay grab your personal protection device.

I suppose that would make you a candidate for the Darwin Award.

There isn't much if any copper in a substation.  It's all ACSR- aluminum coated steel reinforced.

Scott Todd

"fortress remedy"..
1...Not be there when they think you are.
2...Have the operation chiefs' daughter in your clutches at an unknown location as a bargaining chip.....

73DG

Scott, a few of our older area subs and switch yards are still wired with copper busswork.Never been changed out to aluminum. There's 60+ year old transformers still in service around Denver, too.

They've been stealing old copper wire from overhead poles out in the sticks, too. When there's only unoccupied summer vacation homes on a line, and no one to report a power outage.

Colorado also has a home defense law on the books known as the "Make my Day" law. But you need to make sure the bullet entrance holes are in the front side of the perp and not in his back side or you be in big trouble. Unmanned booby traps are unlawful.

About 20 years ago there was an arsonist running rampant in this area.  He became widely known as the Woodlawn Arsonist.  His speciality was older wood frame buildings.  I remember being fearful, since both my ham shack and house described to a tee the kinds of buildings he targeted, although he seemed to stick with unoccupied structures.

I was talking to a friend of mine who was a sheriff deputy at the time, and asked him a hypothetical question regarding what would happen if I caught the arsonist one night, after he had just finished emptying a can gasoline all over the side of the house and was holding a cigarette lighter next to the wall ready to light it off, and the only possibility I had of saving the house would be to shoot the guy dead on the spot.

He said he would have no choice but to arrest me and I'd probably be charged with first degree murder. According to the law (in this state) taking a human  life is not justifiable to protect property.  But if I could convince the jury that I believed someone was inside the house at the time, I'd probably be let off the hook with "justifiable homicide" since I would have acted in the belief that another human  life was in danger.

He was finally caught when he torched a badly run-down house he thought was unoccupied, but the owner was inside and was able to give a description.  That house was only about a quarter of a mile from here.  Turns out he was a member of the local volunteer fire department, and had often shown up at the scene to fight some of the fires he had started.

I wonder if he had all the whacker accessories too!?

Remember the women suffered serious burns on her genitals.

After that case was done The Wall Street Journal ran an article explaining the award .Paraphrasing it, McDonald's legal approach was to tell the jury that we serve  xxx,xxx cups of coffee a day and so one serious burn out of all that coffee is statistically insignificant.

That attitude and lack of sensitivity so inflamed the jury that they awarded the women the revenue from one day of McDonalds coffee sales to her.

What value would you place on damage to your exciter?
The basic message was a little compassion might have saved the entire problem
Carl
/KPD

And what's happened to the basic message that putting near-boiling coffee in a flimsy cup next to your "exciter" in a moving car is a really stupid thing to do over which McD's had no control?  ???

Stupid female klutz 1; society 0

I don't disagree nor did the jury. He said it was the arrogance of McDonalds that ticked them off . Unfortunately out of context the trail of logic is lost. It was interesting that even the Journal took the position that Micky D blew it

And I imagine that more than one innocent person has been convicted in a criminal trial due to a display of arrogance from the individual's knowledge of their innocence.  It doesn't matter what the defendant thinks or knows, only how behavior is perceived by the jury. 

So appear innocent but not arrogant, take note of this you SMUG Flex owners :)

The unfortunate thing is that in the legal system for the last number of years, the truth makes less difference than the paperwork and abiding by the format(s) required.  You gotta play the game, regardless of the truth of the matter.

A federal judge has actually said as much:

Court Declares Actual Innocence Irrelevant

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has decided that the fact that a convicted criminal can now be proven to be innocent does not matter if he filed an appeal in 16 months rather than the 12 months allowed by the statute of limitations. Actual innocence simply does not matter, only technicalities do. You can see the full ruling here (http://www.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2010/07/06/09-35276.pdf).

http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2010/07/9th_circuit_declares_actual_in.php


You Don't Even Have to Be High to Get Busted.

If you smoke a joint Friday night and drive to work bright-eyed and bushy-tailed Monday morning in Michigan, you can be arrested, charged, and convicted as a drugged driver because inactive chemical traces of THC, or metabolites, remain in your bloodstream. The Michigan Supreme Court ruled that motorists can be convicted of Driving Under the Influence of Drugs (DUID) even if they are not under the influence of drugs. According to the Supreme Court opinion in the consolidated cases Derror v. Michigan and Kurts v. Michigan authored by Justice Maura Corrigan, actual innocence of driving while impaired is "irrelevant."

http://duioklahoma.blogspot.com/2009/03/actual-innocence-is-irrelevant.html

Whatever happened The United States of America that was taught to me in my high school civics class?  Do they even teach civics classes anymore?

Hmm, not sure.  Have you ever had McDonald's coffee?

That is actually supposed to be common fire-bug behavior.  Start a fire, then try to rescue occupants and be a hero. 

I wonder if the copper chumps got any radial wire.  KSL is the dominant outlet on 1160.  Single tower a bit under 500 feet as I recall not far from the shore of Great Salt Lake (someone knew where to go for good ground).   We have a local 50 KW on 1160 using a 4 tower DA in the daytime (station used to be a daytimer IIRC) then they got the CP to build a night site, a six tower DA about 20 miles southwest from the day site.  the night site sits along side an expressway, I-355; the towers are free standing and unlamped.  They're about 199 feet tall, almost 90 degrees.   they run 50 kw at night but with the requisite deep null to the west.

Even more surprising is the local 820 licensee got authorized to operate at night with a six tower DA, all 90 degrees and around 300 feet tall, strobed, with a lobe to the northeast, running 1.5 KW.  I estimate building that plant, just east of Joliet IL, must have cost at least 7 figures, everything was new, and they get clobbered either by WBAP or IBOC hash from WCCO on 830.   I can get them when CCO isn't in real loud by carefully positioning my loopstick to null BAP and favor the local, but who knows how many listeners do that with good results.

Phil, K2PG posted a message the other day and mentioned that copper thieves stole his 160m radial system.

I recall a story about an AM broadcaster in Puerto Rico who replaced his radial system with steel barbed fence wire after copper thieves stole 2 or 3 entire radial systems from the same site, each within days after they had been laid down.

I'd pity anyone who would try to steal mine.  I pulled up a short piece of buried copper wire when I re-did my tuner configuration - not an actual radial, but buried about the same depth in the same soil with the same turf.  I had hell of a time pulling up only about 6 feet.  The #12 soft drawn radial wire would probably break before anyone could get even one whole radial to come up through the sod.

Some company has been advertising lately in the broadcast rags soft-drawn copperweld radial wire.  They claim it is cheaper than solid copper, and practically worthless to scrap metal dealers.  Being  soft drawn, it goes down just as easily as pure copper.

My first serious radial system was made of #10 copperweld taken down from old open-wire railway telegraph lines.  It went down easily, and after  nearly 40 years I occasionally find a little piece still buried.  When I pull it up, I have noticed that there is plenty of copper cladding left on the wire. They used copperweld because the steel wire normally used for open wire telephone lines would soon disintegrate from the sulphur laden smoke from coal-fired steam locomotives.

The problem with copperweld radial wire is crack-heads won't know what it is until they have gotten to the scrap yard--the ground system will still get destroyed.

I guess if it is cheaper it is still less loss, and maybe after wrecking the ground system one time they'll move on to another radio station.

The other thing that is sad is the theft of heliax.  I bet they see these thick feedlines and imagine they're loaded with copper, and tear them out but in reality most of the mass and size is due to plastic and air.   the smaller sizes have a solid center but that's copper clad aluminum.

Heliax is such a unique item I'd think the broadcasting industry would attempt an awareness campaign to get scrap yards to call the cops if anyone shows up with it.

I used to live on the stuff when I did a lot of long haul family travel, hot rod meets, and hamfests. But I always asked for a side cup of ice cubes. When youre trying to stay awake the taste is secondary ;D

Legal system = procedure not justice.

Many times people win because the opposing side makes mistakes.