The Tribune

By DANA SMITH

Tribune Staff Reporter

dsmith@tribunemedia.net

A BUSINESS owner is calling on the government to shut down the country’s scrap metal yards until they can be better regulated after thousands of dollars worth of damage was done to his concrete pump truck, allegedly by copper thieves.

Stanford Moss, of Regional Concrete Pumping Service, said after parking his truck in Stapledon Gardens last week, he discovered that “every single piece” of the truck’s metal wiring had been cut out.

“I saw the cables that connect the battery to the engine, those were cut. Then I proceeded to open up the hood of the truck and every single piece of wiring that controlled my automatic systems, the cenures, the temperature, the pressure - every single thing. I mean, gone – chopped out with a hatchet,” Mr Moss said.

“The whole value of the wire that they cut out, if they maybe get $60 for that, that’s a lot. On the other hand, having to replace those wires and the labour and the cost of materials to replace that would be between $5,000 and $6,000.”

To make matters worse, he said, he had been offered a contract for construction in the Family Islands, but with his truck out of commission he is unable to accept the job.

“I met a gentleman who is an architect and contractor and he had offered me the possibility of taking the truck to the Berry Islands where he has a contract to do some condominiums and town houses,” Mr Moss said.

“The whole issue of the damage is one thing, but the loss of revenue and everything else associated with not being to work the vehicle – the cost is just unbelievable.

“It’s being done at the expense of others while the owners of these scrap metal shops are profiting and calling themselves successful.”

Mr Moss said if a scrap metal yard buys stolen goods then that organisation should be culpable. “At least,” he said. “At the bare minimum, they’re culpable or they’re aiding and abetting.”

Mr Moss is calling for better regulations concerning scrap metal yards, because of the common occurrences of reported copper and metal theft.

“I’m sure the voices of people like myself who have been devastated by similar acts, all of our voices collectively, must come to gather at some point and say to the government, ‘You need to take a look at this thing again because people are being severely impacted.’

“They need to do a much better job at monitoring, or the government has to shut them down until they find a way to govern themselves,” he said.

“If I wanted to go start the truck now, I can’t start it. I can’t do anything. I literally cannot do anything unless I get some expert from God-knows-where who really knows how to go back, read the specs, and find out exactly what connects to what and what it controls.”

In 2012, of 367 reported robberies, 47 per cent or 174 of those robberies involved copper or jewellery. Of the 1,106 armed robberies incidents reported last year, 596 of those incidents involved copper or jewellery - 54 per cent.

For this year, until June, 59 per cent of armed robberies involved copper or jewellery, and 41 per cent of robberies.