By Natalie Bazinet
Staff Writer
Theft of copper and other metals seems to know no boundaries in Aroostook County, as residential and commercial properties in both populated and more isolated areas have been afflicted with this type of crime.
“We’ve been finding that property crimes have been increasing,” said Limestone Police Officer John Deveau.
One of the hardest-hit entities in this score of metal thefts is the Loring Commerce Centre.
Over a six-week period, thieves looking to obtain scrap metal extensively damaged five buildings on the former base. According to Facilities Manager of the Loring Commerce Centre Neil Haines, thieves have targeted copper pipes, copper ground rods, and heavy copper grounding wire.
“It’s more than someone just stealing a pipe,” explained Haines as he described the extent of the destruction sustained during the vandalism and theft.
The damages start racking up when thieves first break into the building. If, for example, the criminal decides to go after the copper pipes used for the plumbing in a restroom, they’ll destroy the toilet, rip open the wall and tear down the ceiling to remove as much of the copper that they can, damaging the lights, the fire suppression controls and the alarm system in the process.
Loring Development Authority President and CEO Carl Flora did mention that materials thefts have been going on at the former base for years, but “the amount of damage done to ‘harvest’ the relatively small value of this desirable copper material is totally out of line.”
Repairing one of Loring’s building after the drastic copper thefts isn’t a simple matter of going back to the store and buying some new wire or a new pipe.
To rectify the previously described scenario where the thief goes after the copper plumbing, “you have to buy a new toilet, you have to hire a plumber to put it in, you have to hire a carpenter to come out and repair the drywall or the sheetrock, you have to pay someone to put the ceiling back up, put the ceiling lights back in, get an electrician to come and make sure that they didn’t do other damage somewhere when they pulled the ceiling down,” he described.
Officers of the Limestone Police Department have worked to help bring justice to the individuals perpetrating the crimes, and they’ve recently made several arrests in thefts regarding properties on the Loring Commerce Centre owned by the Aroostook Band of Micmacs (ABM).
Officer Deveau described one instance where three motors worth $30,000 apiece owned by the ABM were disassembled, stolen and sold for what little money the criminals could get by selling the scrap metal. While the criminal was apprehended, Deveau mentioned that the likelihood of the ABM being fully reimbursed for their loss is not very high.
Previously, LPD had an officer dedicated to patrolling the former base, but budget cuts and the resultant decreased staffing has hindered officers in combating the increased vandalism and theft at Loring.
Limestone isn’t the only area affected by copper thefts, though; Caribou Police Chief Michael Gahagan sited an instance in Caribou where $40,000 worth of copper was taken right in town.
Gahagan described that as scrap metal businesses emerged in the region, the metal thefts previously predominant in the southern part of Maine made their way up to Aroostook County.
“All southern Maine-type crimes typically end up coming north,” Gahagan said, citing how the drug problem took about three years to get from the southern part of the state to this region. Anticipating the trend afforded CPD officers time to prepare for and properly handle the issue.
As metal theft increases, Gahagan cited national statistics showing that crime is decreasing overall.
“You’re always going to have pockets of small crime which can usually be attributed to a group of individuals and because we’re a mobile society now and they have vehicles, those crimes aren’t limited to just Caribou, Presque Isle or Fort Fairfield,” Gahagan explained.
Area law enforcement officers have been working together to help combat the increasingly mobile nature of these crimes, but Gahagan credits one of The County’s strengths as the communal vigilance that comes natural to area residents.
“It’s the amount of cooperation that we get from the public to let us know [of a problem], because law enforcement can’t do it alone,” Gahagan said.
In Limestone, where the police budget has been decreasing for years, they have been diligently applying for grants to keep up with the increasing diversity of crimes.
“Southern Maine crimes are coming north,” Deveau said, whose written numerous grants for the department to obtain necessary equipment. “Either we get ahead of [the new type of crimes] by increasing our staffing numbers and technologies that the department needs to be proactive or, what’s going to happen is we are going to be overrun with the new crimes and will have to try catch up in combating it.”
