Copper Thieves have been terrorizing metro Atlanta for the past 3 years. Their favorite target is the metal in the external compressors of an HVAC unit.
If you go to the back of a church building you will see that a large church will require about 5 or 10 of these units in order to cool the interior.
For the Street Pirate who doesn't give a damn about the sanctity of a building or the people he injures all he needs is a heavy duty pair of metal snips and that $4000 single unit will be compromised beyond repair.
The metal in a functioning unit is precision manufactured. The cooper is molded in the form of both tubing and heat sinks which allow the heat to disburse into the air as the freon makes its return trip into the building for more cooling.
The Street Pirates don't care about the precision form of the metal. They are interested in obtaining the metal for scrap. This $4000 unit (most times more) is often sold for merely $10 to $40 worth of metal to various scrap yards and recyclers.
Since the Street Pirate is not engaged in a "cost/benefit" ratio that allows him to abstain from doing a disproportionate amount of damage for the benefit obtained - the PROPERTY OWNERS are on the hook to protect their units from theft - lest they have to pay yet another $50,000 to recover.
As I type this I am thinking of one church in northwest Atlanta that was hit 3 times. After the first time they put a chain link fence up. After the second time they put up a rod iron fence with a pad lock. The Street Pirates merely cut the locks off and had their way. Today the gate to the iron fence has been welded shut.
The only sure way to address this problem is to prevent the young people who are otherwise on track to become the pillars of their communities from becoming Street Pirates, the main attackers of their community's permanent interests.
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