Thieves make off with live power line [Archive] - Glock Talk

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itisbruno
09-13-2008, 23:16
Residents shocked

SOURCE (http://nhregister.com/articles/2008/09/13/news/shoreline/doc48cba842414d4709125721.txt)

Saturday, September 13, 2008 9:09 AM EDT

By Mark Zaretsky, Register Staff

BRANFORD — Don’t ask just how or when they did it.

But police are investigating the recent theft of a live power line — 80 feet of it — from the vacant former Cherry Hill Bowling Lanes building at 131 Commercial Parkway.

"Whoever took it probably knew something about electricity," said Det. Lt. William Carroll. "It was live and it was there about six weeks before and someone from Northeast Utilities was up there" and noticed that it was missing.

Carroll theorized that the wire probably was taken for its scrap value.

The live power line ran between a nearby electrical conduit and the exterior of the building, Carroll said.

Whoever stole the power line would have had to have known how to go about safely disconnecting the power to it, he said.

The former bowling alley is behind Wal-Mart.

The theft is believed to have taken place sometime between July 1 and Sept. 1, he said.

As of this week, "We don’t have any leads on it, no," Carroll said. "We’ve done some checking and we came up with nothing.

"One of the problems is, it was reported to us well after it was taken," he said.

Anyone with any information that they think might be helpful is asked to call Branford police at (203) 481-4241 and ask for the detective bureau, Carroll said.

This incident would make it among the latest in a long line of apparent scrap metal thefts in the area.

Past thefts have included everything from the interior wiring of large, vacant buildings, such as the former Macy’s building in New Haven, to used street light poles — allegedly brought to a local scrap dealer by a former East Haven Fire Department battalion chief after they were stored in a parking lot behind fire headquarters — to city and suburban manhole covers.

New Haven police recently conducted a sting operation that resulted in the arrest of a supervisor from an area scrap metal dealer for allegedly failing to require identification from someone selling scrap metal, as required by law.

The former bowling alley has been largely vacant for several years, although someone had been renting out a portion of it for storage, Carroll said.

PBCounty
09-13-2008, 23:32
The scrap industry better expect some changes to their operations if this stuff continues. Everywhere you look it's getting out of hand.

Targettarget
09-13-2008, 23:32
"Whoever took it probably knew something about electricity," said Det. Lt. William Carroll. "

Yep, that's a nice piece of investigation right there.

fireguy129
09-14-2008, 08:06
Locally, the scumbags have taken the brass markers off Veteran's graves. Don't the scrap dealers know they're buying stolen merchandise? Why aren't they prosecuted as such? Same with cat converters, I've got 2 cars in the driveway. Unless im in the exhaust business, how would I get a half dozen a week?

rhikdavis
09-14-2008, 08:43
Yep, that's a nice piece of investigation right there.


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