Unlike over-the-counter cold medicines that contain pseudoephedrine and similar chemicals, there's nothing in copper that addicts can use to get high.
It's a perfect crime, said Katharine Kent, the president of the Solar Store, 2833 N. Country Club Road, where copper has been stolen from the store's back lot four times since summer.
"They know exactly where they can sell it, they know exactly how much they can get for it and no one will ask them for ID," Kent said, adding that there is nothing on copper pipes that can identify where they are stolen from when they are sold to scrap-metal dealers.
The Solar Store has lost an estimated $800 to $1,000 in copper pipes in the four incidents. The thieves likely use a mattress to climb over the coiled razor wire, Kent said, and then one of them feeds the 20-foot-long copper tubes through the chain link fence to another just beyond it.
The city itself has had six break-ins at Tucson Water facilities in the last 14 months, with thieves making off with between $85,000 and $100,000 worth of metals, the majority of it copper wiring, said Fernando Molina, a department spokesman.
There are hundreds of cases in the last six months of thefts of copper wires and pipes from construction sites and business, said Jim Caccavale, a Tucson police officer in the major-theft offenders unit. Although copper is the main target, he said aluminum and bronze are stolen for sale as well.
The vast majority of the offenders who are boosting copper are meth users looking for money to "tweak," Caccavale said, while a smaller portion of the thieves are heroin addicts. "The majority of these cases are drug-fueled," he said.
Sgt. Wes Dison, who oversees the major-theft unit, said the police know this because more than half of the people arrested in the stolen-copper cases have meth or other addictions to support.
"With the amounts of copper being stolen, it's not being done on foot, it's being done by car," Harris said. "I would say it is probably junkies."
What makes matters worse for builders, who are frequent victims, is thieves are tearing out wiring and pipes from partially finished buildings, Caccavale said. Tearing out drywall to replace copper wiring, or jackhammering a floor to replace pipes can cost three to four times what the stolen copper did, he said.
Armando Castro, a manager at Recyco Inc., 650 E. 22nd Street, questioned how he would get the ID of a transient, and said the lines at the recycler on peak days would be so unwieldy it would turn away customers. Recyco now checks IDs for transactions more than $25.
Security is the only thing that stopped the theft of copper from builder John Wesley Miller's Armory Park del Sol housing development near South Third Avenue and East 16th Street.
Luis Figueroa, a vice president for John Wesley Miller Cos., said hiring a security guard for $4,000 a month is the only thing that reduced the thefts plaguing the project since 2002. Most of the copper thefts, and the most serious ones, have occurred in 2005, Figueroa said.
Many of the thefts have occurred after the floors of the houses have been poured, Miller said. That means a small amount of copper is sticking inches out of the floor, with a much larger section of pipe below it. Miller said tearing out that little bit of copper costs thousands of dollars to repair because the entire pipe must be replaced, which requires digging out the floor.
Construction site break-ins are a problem all over Tucson and nationwide, said Jim Kuliesh, the executive director of the Alliance of Construction Trades. Insurance doesn't cover it all, either, he said, because if a contractor makes enough claims, he may get turned down for insurance.
At the Solar Store, Kent said she hopes the City Council will approve the new law. However, she said its overall effect may be limited because most of the scrap dealers are located in Pima County, not Tucson.
She said real change will have to come from the Legislature. But she said the city's law is a start to combat the scourge that has hurt her business.
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