The Los Angeles City Council has approved a reward program to help catch thieves targeting copper wiring and plumbing across the city, a problem leaders say has led to rampant street light outages in Boyle Heights.
The motion, approved Friday in a 10-2 vote, was co-sponsored by 14th District Councilmember Kevin de León, who has brought attention to the vandalism, saying it deeply impacts public safety in his district.
The program would reward individuals who share information leading to the arrest and prosecution of those involved in the theft of copper wire, light standards, city plaques, tombstones and statues. The city would offer rewards of $1,000 for misdemeanor convictions or $5,000 for felony convictions, according to De León’s office.
“Copper wire theft is not a victimless crime. When thieves rip out copper wire, they just don’t take metal, they leave entire neighborhoods in the dark,” De León said at Friday’s City Council meeting. Council District 14, encompassing neighborhoods like Boyle Heights, Lincoln Heights and El Sereno, is among the hardest hit by copper wire thieves, the councilman said.
At a press conference in January, De León shared that a staggering 38,000 feet of copper wiring, or seven miles, had been stolen from the 6th Street Bridge, leaving the well-lit arches in complete darkness. He estimated repairs would cost upwards of $2.5 million.
De León added that bronze plaques off statues and grave markers are targeted for theft to sell to metal buyers. He pointed to the statue of Mexican composer Agustín Lara at El Parque de Mexico in Lincoln Heights, which had evidence of attempted theft, leading to a proactive removal of the statue by the Department of Recreation and Parks.
The new reward program is part of a larger initiative to address the crimes. In February, the city voted to develop a copper wire task force in conjunction with the Los Angeles Police Department and Bureau of Street Lighting, to investigate thefts across the 14th district.
Pete Brown, spokesperson for De León, said that there have been arrests since the task force’s implementation. He added that while the task force continues to investigate and prosecute copper wire thieves, the city is working to re-engineer lighting fixtures on the 6th Street Bridge to avoid further theft and destruction.
Council members Eunisses Hernandez and Hugo Soto-Martinez both voted against the reward motion, arguing that the majority of broken streetlights were out of service due to a lack of maintenance, not copper wire theft.
“We simply don’t invest enough money into the department to do the regular maintenance of street lights and that’s what our constituents are asking us to address,” Soto-Martínez said, urging instead for the city to better reinforce existing light fixtures to prevent vandalism.
Soto-Martínez pointed at the LAPD’s past of implementing rewards programs to deter crime and said there wasn’t enough data to show they had a tangible effect on crime rates.
The copper wire theft reward program will need approval from Mayor Karen Bass before it can be implemented.
