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Subscribe to RSSPolice in Florida announced Friday that they had arrested a suspect in the disappearance of 166 manhole covers.
The Polk County Sheriff’s detectives launched an investigation on Wednesday after the local utility company, Toho Water Authority, reported that dozens of the 300-pound steel lids had gone missing over a period of about two weeks, a release from the Sheriff said.
A "scrap alert" to all secondhand metal dealers sparked a tip leading to Christopher Fink, 40, who was arrested on Thursday after he allegedly offloaded the covers — worth more than $22,000 in total — with Gregco Recycling.
Local authorities were not amused.
"The lack of manhole covers significantly increased the risk of harm to drivers and pedestrians in the area," said a release from the Polk County Sheriff’s Office. "Toho placed temporary plywood covers over the spaces and marked each area as a hazard."
Fink was charged with 21 counts of grand theft, four counts of dealing in stolen property, four counts of false verification to secondhand metal dealer and 166 counts culpable negligence exposure to harm.
The theft of manhole covers, typically made of cast iron, is a global problem, and generally worsens when the price of scrap metal is high.
In some of other recent manhole cover disappearances, Bessemer City, N.C. in December was investigating the disappearance of 30 covers in a week according to local TV station News 14 while in Cleveland earlier this month, a driver was stopped around 1 a.m. with at least 10 stolen manhole covers and stolen storm grates in the back of his truck.
Last year, the town of Birmingham in the United Kingdom called a crisis meeting over a spate of metal thefts after 900 manhole covers disappeared in 6 months, people posing as city workers brazenly walked off with metal street signs and thieves stripped the plumbing from empty houses.
In the Indian city of Calcutta, the problem of manhole covers disappearing became so severe at one point that the government started making the covers from concrete, according to a report in the Telegraph India. But thieves took them anyway, and cashed in on the rebar embedded inside.
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Only in Florida!!!
Not really, there are morons all over the world doing the same thing. The planet has a disproportionate number of idiots vs. sane people.
Willis, since you didn't bother to read the entire story and focused only on the headline, thought that I would reprint it for you here.
You were saying??? By the way, you never mentioned your hometown.
This is HAPPENING EVERYWHERE in the US.
They are stealing the fountains and fences from around parks, stealing out of people's back yards.
They are stealing all the copper pipes and wire out of houses while you are on vacation. These are in good neighborhoods in states like CT, MA, RI and NH The more rural the location, the higher the probability it will happen.
Down the street from my friend's house in CT they were caught stealing the copper gutters off of a church WHILE THE PEOPLE WE INSIDE HAVING A SERMON
They are stealing them everywhere. I live 20 miles from a small town, not a city and it was on TV that someone stols 60 of them. Can you imagine driving down the street and your car hits that hole.
Glen--I have a friend who lives just outside Chicago and she said her neighbor got up to go to work one morning and when he went outside someone had stold all the aluminum siding off his house.
Ridiculous. When people resort to dismantling the infrastructure of our society, maybe its a sign we need to be doing more to provide decent jobs. Our prisons are already full and entry level jobs like Walmart have to be subsidized by the government anyway.
I was walking along with the wife one evening after having a fabulous dinner date. The coversation was kind and I was dreaming of taking her back to the suite and having and "after dinner rubdown" session. Suddenly.........she was gone! This may explain it! I'm remarried now and pretty happy overall. I miss her; but she has been gone the better part of a week......
Willis33,
"Only in Florida!!!"
Not only in Florida. Metal theft has become a national problem. It's usually done by drug addicts who are desperate for money to support their habit. They have even been known to break into power stations to try to steal the copper wiring, even at the risk of being electrocuted as well as stealing pipe fittings from people homes, leaving the homeowner with a huge expense. They will steel anything made of metal that they can sell; not just manhole covers.
Wakehead
Instead of providing jobs, perhaps we should accept that there is scum in society and do something about it.
Sirlafalot
LMAO
@ willis
There is a problem here in california with it too. One of your coveted blue states.
florida is a blue state
The unemployment rate is so severe in Southern California that many illegal and legal residents who no longer able to find construction jobs are resorting to scavenging metals from public and private properties. Local cops, inundated with vandalism, theft, and burglary reports including video recording of these crimes, have stop compiling the statistics.
As the popular saying goes in lawless Southern California, "If it aint nailed down, it's gone."
They need to take about twenty of those manhole covers and drop them on the guy. What a jackass, with no consideration for the safety of other people.
Or, maybe just tie one of those manhole covers to his ankle and drop him in the Atlantic ocean about a mile out. Problem solved.
alan,
"tie one of those manhole covers to his ankle and drop him in the Atlantic ocean about a mile out."
That sounds like the Mafia remedy, concrete shoes; in this case, iron shoes.
Now finally a real story, all that Obama stuff and what he wants to do, but can't do, so he has to blame someone else, and the fact that he really isn't who he says he is, and all that, we had 4 years of that, something other than the liberal biased media protecting the one who says "you didn't build that" and so on, good deal.
This clown steals manhole covers, then goes to a scrap yard to sell them, and people wonder why that call the state FLORI DUH.
starbuck49....It's happening all over, if you bothered to read the story and many of the other comments before posting your cute little comment....like nobody ever heard FLORI DUH before.....FAIL !!!
I hope they amend our "Stand Ones Ground" law to include defending manhole covers....No doubt a missing manhole cover poses a serious threat to life and limb !!!!!!!
Where's another link to a story somewhere else that someone did this ?
starbuck49..." Where's another link to a story somewhere else that someone did this ?"
Does someone have to do your homework for you all the time.....Start here...
http://chicago.cbslocal.com/2012/02/22/manhole-cover-thefts-pose-danger-to-cars-pedestrian/
Dozens of stories...come back next month after you have read them all..
http://search.yahoo.com/search;_ylt=A0oG7nUjSARR_lUAB3JXNyoA?p=stolen%20manhole%20covers%20problem%20nationwide&fr2=sb-top&fr=slv8-
P.S....Done with you here...
Put these guys in jail and your likely to come in the next day and all the bars and fences will have been scrapped...lol
Just imagine if they try to yank all the assistance from the poor....You got to work and come home and EVERYTHING is gone....whoops.
Put Chips in them, smile.
Steve... I like the idea. Anything with intrinsic value, hidden transponder, registered with some watch-dog outfit with a transponder data base. It starts moving, cops called in. Think of it as a new business opportunity. Quick, get a patten on the idea before it is stolen. I'm too old and lazy to make use of it.
Wouldn't work. You can't implant a transponder in molten iron, it would burn up. So you'd have to drill a hole in the cover after it has been cast, and implant the transponder. That would make its location in the cover obvious to the thief. He'd just drill into it and remove the transponder before stealing the cover.
Have you seen the new guy in D Block?
Yeah. Heard he's in for 4 counts of false verification to a secondhand metals dealer.
We better give him a wide berht!
Ban Man holes
Prosecute this creep to the fullest. Can you imagine what running into one of the uncovered manholes would do to your vehicle and possibly your family riding in the vehicle? Put him on the chain gang (in chains) to clean up the highways. One year for each manhole cover.
All misdemeanors in most states. It is worse if you steal public material than personal property. Personal property you are stuck. The business down the street had $12,000 in fabrication metal stolen and they caught the guy. He has a record a mile long and is penniless. You cannot deduct it from state or local or fed taxes (10% rule) and insurance will not cover it as inventory and machinery are line items (extra) He had brought it to the junk yard four days earlier and got caught onthe 4th run and since he was doing it for months and since there were no serial numbers, the junk yard was in no obligation to say it was from his on those days.
Most of these thieves are doing it for drugs, not because of hard times or to feed their family.. The arrest records online and in the papers are all side by side for this
Not the chain gang, Bill. He'd probably try to steal the chain!
Bill in SC ...(#6).."Prosecute this creep to the fullest. Can you imagine what running into one of the uncovered manholes would do to your vehicle and possibly your family riding in the vehicle?"
Agreed....The same goes for idiots stealing STOP signs for wall decorations....
At least most places have them manufactured with an alloy that has no scrap value....
It is increasingly difficult to live in a civilized society. Just a few people can ruin it for everyone else.
They should be charged with attempted murder.
Manhole, isn't that politically incorrect. Where the heck is the ACLU? NBC should be sued for 50 gazillion dollars.
Common Man
How about man-orifice instead ..
Wow. Too funny. Can you imagine the physical effort it took to steal that many manhole (I know, it should be personhole) covers?
He should have chosen copper, it's not nearly as heavy.
And to think that all he's going to get for it is a prison term. What was that line about stupid is as stupid does?
I've noticed that man of the manhole covers in my city have small spot-welds at several points around the rim, so they cannot be remove without the use of a cutting torch. That makes it a lot harder to remove them inconspicuously at night. Others have small bolt-on brackets holding them in place, with an oddly shaped bolt that cannot be grasped by ordinary wrenches or pliers.
that's good money for all that cast iron. but you would have to melt it down yourself and then sell it or maybe use it for something else yourself. that way nobody knows where it came from.
You would think selling 199 manhole covers at the scrap yard just might raise a red flag of two. Yet nothing was said until the cops put out a scrap alert. Hmm things that make you say hmm.
I take it you've never been to a scrap yard before? If you want to see the largest collection of dubious characters outside of a federal penitentiary, go to a scrap yard. The red flags at scrap yards are when someone is scrapping something that doesn't seem stolen.
You can build an entire vehicle with nothing but Manhole covers. It just cant go up any hills.
Thi happens when there is no jobs because their goverments steal everyones money.
perhaps if you could speak english, someone would hire you.
Sounds like to me, he has a job.
Why would a guy steal 166 storm drains?
Maybe he's saving up for a rainy day.
I worked in the casino industry for many years. The internal security department had a working rule of thumb--25% of people are honest, 25% of people will steal from you no matter what, and the other 50% will steal from you if they have a chance. Cynical, but the result of many years of experience. Doesn't say much for us as a society, does it?
It's not our society it's Us.
It's sad if it's truly that bad Miltie. Include me in the honest section.
That sounds like justification for a "treat everyone like a criminal" mentality. Not to say that there aren't thieves out there, or that they aren't numerous, but three out of four people? That's paranoia.
Ah, if there is one state that never fails to be likened to thrid-world countries, it is Florida!
I actually would link a few other states to the third world before I got to Florida, but they are definitely in the top 10.
Smash his dang kneecaps with a sledgehammer. It will make it harder to carry those covers in the future...
Yeah....then he gets to collect from victims of crime AND SSDI. I say Take a finger....seems to work for the Yakusa. Everytime they look down, they'll remember...
You'll have this in a small town.
The Parade Continues....and continues.....
Glad to see the entrepreneurial spirit is alive and well.
They should begin with the people dealing in the scrap. The buyers are just as guilty as the thieves. However, that aside, this country can provide all of the jobs possible to offer man and yet we have thieves. We need to go to the old ways and cut a hand off. Some of the stealing would stop, some of the thieves would invent new ways to steal. We live in a very rural community so this is not an issue with us. North of us there have been several instances of robbing the elderly of purses, wallets, whatever. This really makes me angry. They are so vulnerable anyway and then a punk steals their sense of security. These people do not want jobs. Just something to steal.
Sirlafalot,
Thank you so much for the belly laugh!! There should be more of those and less of people showing their total ignorance. I laughed till tears ran. Keep em' coming.
Stolen air conditioners from churches and homes, stolen copper from railroad signals circuitry, stolen rails from railroads, stolen traffic control signs. You name metal and somebody will steal it regardless of the consequences to the victims.
300 pound manhole covers are "traffic rated" and the most heavy duty lids available. Anyone than can pry one loose and load it in a vehicle is one tough thief. In Texas, stealing one is a felony.