Copper thieves in action

[k4kyv]

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.

[K1JJ]

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

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

[K1JJ]

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.

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

[WA1GFZ]

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

[k4kyv]

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.

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

[N0BST]

attempting to steal LIVE copper from an electrical substation

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

Scott Todd

[W7TFO]

"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

[Bill, KD0HG]

attempting to steal LIVE copper from an electrical substation

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

Scott Todd

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.

[k4kyv]

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.

[KX5JT]

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

[Carl WA1KPD]

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.

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

[WB3JOK]

The basic message was a little compassion might have saved the entire problem
Carl

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? 

[KM1H]

Stupid female klutz 1; society 0

[Carl WA1KPD]

The basic message was a little compassion might have saved the entire problem
Carl

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? 

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

[WQ9E]

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

[K9PNP]

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.

[k4kyv]

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://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

[KX5JT]

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?

[K5UJ]

Stupid female klutz 1; society 0

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

[K5UJ]

  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.

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

[K5UJ]

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.

[k4kyv]

I wonder if the copper chumps got any radial wire. 

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.

[K5UJ]

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.

[KM1H]

Stupid female klutz 1; society 0

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

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

[W2VW]

Legal system = procedure not justice.

Many times people win because the opposing side makes mistakes.

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.