After sundown, James Cowles’ bike ride on Lexington Parkway and past the Como Lakeside Pavilion has become darker than ever.

Street lanterns that once illuminated the way now stand useless, the access panels at their bases ripped off to expose electrical wiring that splays out haphazardly like so much spaghetti.

Copper wire thieves have made short work of the lighting in and around Como Park, as well as along many of St. Paul’s other parkways and thoroughfares, cloaking much of the city in darkness by 5 p.m. That’s fueled mounting concerns about repair costs, public safety and general aesthetics.

Cowles, a web developer who lives off Larpenteur Avenue, recently stopped to snap a picture of the Como Pavilion glowing eerily against the stygian backdrop of its unlit parking lot. Otherwise, “it was really pitch black,” he said, recalling the cloudy, moonless sky. “It was uneasy.”

It’s not that pleas for fixes have fallen on deaf ears at City Hall. St. Paul Public Works and Parks and Recreation officials have scrambled to find new approaches to thwart copper wire thieves, at escalating costs to city coffers. Streetlight repair due to wire theft cost Public Works $777,000 so far this year, more than seven times the amount for all of 2020.

The Ramsey County attorney’s office has filed charges in 18 cases this year involving copper wire theft, of which 11 involved streetlights, but city officials are looking toward bigger fixes at the state level.

Otherwise, little has proven effective, and the thieves have become especially industrious, sometimes hitting the same locations back-to-back in the same day.

Thefts go beyond streetlight wires

Recently, thieves have ripped telephone communication lines out of the ground, causing phone outages at a central Parks and Recreation maintenance facility on Hamline Avenue. “That’s something we haven’t seen before,” said Parks and Rec Director Andy Rodriguez.

CenturyLink reported on Nov. 9 that about $1,000 worth of copper telephone/internet wire had been cut out and stolen from a utility manhole in the area of Snelling Avenue and Pierce Butler Route in St. Paul, “causing damage of upwards of $100,000,” a police report said. “According to employees, this damage has knocked out the phone and internet for around 650 people in the area.”

Copper theft in the Twin Cities and around Minnesota has increased this year, costing Lumen — the parent company of CenturyLink — hundreds of thousands of dollars to restore service, according to Mark Molzen, Lumen spokesperson. It went from being relatively uncommon to happening one to two times a month, which can impact hundreds of customers for up to two to three weeks before the damaged facilities can be fully restored.

The thefts impact their ability to serve customers “and denies our customers’ ability to use critical communications services,” Molzen said. “… Anyone who sees suspicious activity at unusual times around a manhole or telephone pole is encouraged to call their local law enforcement agency.”

Elsewhere in St. Paul, thieves have ripped wire from air-conditioning units — a problem more prevalent in warmer climates — and even traffic signals. “They’re getting into some and pulling out fiber and wrecking the whole facility, hoping that it’s copper,” said Public Works Director Sean Kershaw.

About 50 cables were cut at the city’s new network of electric vehicle charging stations within this calendar year alone, Rodriguez said.

Many of the street lights around Como Park have had the copper wiring removed by thieves, leaving the popular St. Paul park a dark place at dusk on Thursday, Nov. 29, 2023. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)

Not long ago, St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter texted Kershaw about what appeared to be a two-month streetlight outage along Case Avenue. In reality, said Kershaw, the city had been diligently replacing stolen wires there. And thieves had been equally diligent about returning to the scene of the crime — sometimes the same night.

“We looked, and checked, and we’ve worked on that one stretch nine times,” Kershaw said.

“Shepard Road has been hit bad,” Kershaw added. “Johnson Parkway, Furness Parkway — when we work on the base, people go out and steal them again, sometimes the same day.” They’re places that “tend to be a little more isolated, a little easier to steal from without getting caught … but we’ve been seeing them going to residential areas also.”

A costly problem

What’s the appeal of copper wire? Copper is a key conduit in power generation and transmission equipment, as well as construction and factory equipment and other electronics, putting it in hot demand when the economy is growing. And as demand goes up, so does the purchase price at scrapyards.

Copper, which sold for roughly $2.80 per pound in 2020, now sells for about $3.75 per pound in trade exchanges, though the price is as volatile as the economy and climbed as high as $4.26 last January. Insulated copper wire fetches less money — closer to $1.15 to $1.80 depending upon purity — but that’s still lucrative compared to, say, aluminum cans, which might sell for 30 to 50 cents per pound, according to ArrowScrap.com, ScrapMonster.com and other online exchanges.

Its allure is costing St. Paul taxpayers plenty.

“As soon as the price of copper … spiked when the pandemic started, that’s when this really began,” Kershaw said. “… Both Parks and Public Works have stepped up our efforts to respond, but we’ve seen the issue get worse over this past year.”

Public Works started tracking replacement costs in 2019. What’s so expensive isn’t just replacing the wire, but the damage that accompanies thefts. Restoring lighting from wire theft cost the city $98,588 in 2019, $104,595 in 2020, $294,494 in 2021 and $453,172 last year, including labor, materials and equipment.

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This year, wire theft from traffic signals has added another costly repair bill — most of them have done expensive damage to fiber optic cable, according to Public Works. Signal repairs have cost $169,020 this year and, added to the cost of wire theft from lighting at $777,196, Public Works has been on the hook for $946,217 as of Monday.

These costs represent the city’s repair efforts to date, but not the total extent of wire theft damage across the city.

Separately, the Parks and Recreation department tracks costs due to wire thefts from streetlights in the city’s parks. The numbers have fluctuated from $116,000 in 2018 to $72,000 in 2020, then up to approximately $300,000 in both 2021 and 2022. The costs this year are estimated at $93,000.

Minneapolis has also faced challenges with wire theft from streetlighting systems, incurring costs of $200,000 this year to replace stolen wire from light poles owned and maintained by the city.

Trying to deter thefts

The city has kept trying new and different methods of securing streetlights from thieves, “but they’re persistent in … continuing to break into the base,” sometimes even using a sledgehammer, Kershaw said. Around Como, the city has put steel bands around some of the light bases recently to make them harder to get into.

The wire theft problem isn’t unique to St. Paul, but the city faces difficulties because lantern-style lamps account for about two-thirds of the city’s streetlights and they are most susceptible to theft because the wires are in the base. In places that have more lights on tall wooden poles, with the wires going from the top of one pole to the top of the next, wire theft is much more difficult, Kershaw said.

In Minneapolis, Xcel Energy is in charge of a large number of wood pole lights and they haven’t seen prevalent wire theft, according to an Xcel spokesman.

The Como Lakeside Pavilion is lit by exterior lights in St. Paul on Thursday, Nov. 29, 2023. Many of the street lights around Como Park have had the copper wiring removed by thieves, leaving the popular park a dark place after the sun sets. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)

One step St. Paul is taking is buying new poles that have the access panels up high. “That, we think, will work, but it’s expensive to replace all of our poles that way,” Kershaw said.

The city’s also tried theft-deterrent screws, welding access doors, using epoxy on access doors, keeping streetlights on during the day, reducing wire size and more.

Alarms have been placed on light poles that have been repeatedly targeted for theft. They are monitored by police and “we have caught people,” Kershaw said, but it’s difficult to catch people in the act.

“The public keeping their eyes open is really helpful,” Kershaw said. The city has emphasized that if anyone sees someone working on a light pole who’s not wearing a vest that says “St. Paul Public Works” or doesn’t have a truck nearby labeled as such, “they probably shouldn’t be there” and people should call 911, Kershaw said.

The Ramsey County attorney’s office has charged people with possession of burglary tools and sometimes criminal damage to property, both felonies. But even if someone is caught with copper wire, it’s not classified as felony theft under state law until the amount reaches more than $1,000.

“Just having a screwdriver isn’t a crime,” said Ramsey County Attorney John Choi. Police don’t have to necessarily catch someone in the act, “but pretty close to it,” he said.

If someone reports suspicious activity around a light pole and an officer finds a person with a wire cutter and wires nearby, prosecutors could charge the person with possession of burglary tools.

Many times, the people who have been charged have “chemical dependency addiction issues,” Choi said. “Sometimes the criminal justice system can help facilitate and incentivize the person to uptake the services of treatment, but … that treatment isn’t going to work unless the person is willing to do it.”

A legislative fix?

Many of the street lights around Como Park have had the copper wiring removed by thieves, leaving the popular St. Paul park a dark place at dusk on Thursday, Nov. 29, 2023. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)

Wires from St. Paul streetlights are marked with the city’s name, but that doesn’t mean thieves can’t strip the insulation.

Minnesota law requires every scrap metal dealer to get a statement signed by a person selling scrap metal that attests, under penalty of perjury, that the material was not stolen.

“I don’t believe that the wire that’s being stolen from our streetlights is going to the recycling centers, at least locally,” said St. Paul Police Cmdr. Kurt Hallstrom. “I think there’s a pretty strong black market.”

If people are taking stolen wires to recycling centers, they’re disguising their origins, Hallstrom said.

ISRI, a trade association for the scrap recycling industry, runs ScrapTheftAlert.com — it’s free for law enforcement and recyclers, and has led to about $3.3 million in property being reported as found, said Todd Foreman, director of law enforcement outreach for ISRI.

Law enforcement can use the website to post alerts about stolen materials, so recyclers will know to be on the lookout. “They don’t want to buy stolen materials because it hurts their industry, it hurts their industry’s reputation,” Foreman said.

Earlier this year, legislation signed into Minnesota law made it illegal to possess a used catalytic converter that is not attached to a vehicle unless it has the vehicle’s identification number written on it. The change came about because of a rash of thefts.

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Rodriguez and Kershaw said they think state legislation is also needed to help fix the problem with theft of streetlight wire. The city has limited ability to impose conditions on recycling or scrapping facilities because they’re regulated by the state.

“We think if we can focus on addressing this … demand side, making it harder” to sell stolen wire, “it will go back to the way it was before the pandemic,” Kershaw said.

If there’s a silver lining, so to speak, winter may offer some reprieve from thefts. Typically, thefts slow down during the winter months.

“When the ground freezes, and the conduit has moisture in it and that moisture freezes, it’s much harder to steal the wire,” Kershaw said.

But the frozen ground also means the city can’t replace wires until the spring thaw.