Burglars in Baton Rouge have been on a copper kick in recent years, stealing the metal from places like local air conditioners.
The criminals, who I can only assume strongly resemble the Hamburglar, scaled an 8-foot high fence James Bond-style and ripped the copper tubing out of the air conditioners at local restaurant The Table is Bread on Airline.
Employees arrived at The Table is Bread on Monday only to find four of the five air conditioners missing copper, according to WAFB.
I’d love to know why they left one air conditioner intact. Maybe they wanted to clean out the registers and safe on a subsequent trip, but didn’t want the hassle of having to rob the local business blind in Louisiana’s infamous heat.
That’s understandable, I guess.
I’m sure you’re gripping the edge of your seat for economic commentary on petty theft, so I’ll tell you it’s actually pretty clever to pull a gig like this.
First of all, I’ll make it clear that I don’t imagine a team of scientists and engineers pulling off an Ocean’s Eleven-style heist here. I’m not one to profile, but I’m fairly sure we’re not dealing with top-level criminals attempting to corner the lucrative copper market.
That said, copper has been rising in price for years now, even with inflation taken into account. Prices of precious metals as a whole have been increasing faster than Rebecca Black’s YouTube hits, caused by increased demand from suppliers and investors clamoring for the stuff like it’s going to turn into winning lottery tickets.
So copper is pretty valuable, even as an investment, but if you can get it for free? Well, it’s a steal at twice the price.
Copper is valuable, but why not just load up on cash? As the expression goes, “In God we trust, all others must pay in cash,” right? Why didn’t they hit the registers too?
Well, we can’t say for sure, but money is much easier to trace than copper. At best, you could probably hope for some supply-chain tracking numbers or maybe a unique quirk in the production of the material, but nothing like what we see with the almighty dollar.
So, unless the Hamburglar shows up at the local rundown pawn shop with several hundred feet of copper cut into short, air conditioner-sized pieces, we’re going to be at a bit of a loss to find the criminals.
If only Dora the Explorer had been there to stave off the criminals: “Swiper, no swiping!”
Apparently, it isn’t all that uncommon. The Advocate reported in December 2010 that two thieves broke into an Entergy station, stealing copper and aluminum wire. A September article from the same year reported four DEMCO substations in East Baton Rouge and Livingston Parishes had copper wire stolen as well.
Unlike the more recent Baton Rouge criminals, the two December hoodlums were lifting the electrical wire off the spools from the Entergy station, cutting it into smaller pieces and moving the material back through the hole they cut in the fence.
That’s how theft works. Few people other than a technical worker in the field would know air conditioners have precious metals in the first place, much less how to disassemble the thing into its valuable parts. If they’d have been Starbucks employees, it might have been coffee machines or blenders.
In his interview with WAFB, Lawrence Hardy, The Table is Bread’s co-owner, showed remarkable resolve: “It’s a painful situation, very painful that we’ve got to go through this, but life is ups and downs. We deal with them as they come. We’re going to keep cooking good food and make sure our customers are satisfied, even if I’ve got to go in there and fan them.”
Devin Graham is a 22-year-old business management senior from Prairieville. Follow him on Twitter @TDR_dgraham.
 
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Contact Devin Graham at [email protected]