Baltimore Officials Puzzled By Stolen Light Poles

Some streets of this crime-weary city are getting darker at night because thieves are stealing 30-foot light poles, presumably to sell as scrap metal.

About 130 aluminum light poles have disappeared in the last several weeks, puzzling authorities and prompting residents to wonder how the 250-pound objects are being stolen.

"I've been here 23 years, and I've seen just about everything," Mike Decker, owner of Decker's Salvage Co. "People will steal anything here."

The culprits appear to have gone so far as dressing up as utility crews, police say, and placing orange traffic cones around the poles about to be felled, to avoid arousing suspicion among motorists.

It definitely is brazen," said Officer Nicole Monroe, a city police spokeswoman. "It surprises me that people would be so brazen as to do something like this."

Light poles vanishing

Thieves are sawing down aluminum light poles. Some 130 have vanished from Baltimore's streets in the last several weeks, authorities say, presumably sold for scrap metal. But so far the case of the pilfered poles has stumped the police and left many local residents wondering just how someone manages to make off with what would seem to be a conspicuous street fixture.

The poles, which weigh about 250 pounds apiece, have been snatched during the day and in the middle of the night, from two-lane blacktop roads and from parkways with three lanes on either side of grass median strips, in poor areas and in some of the city's most affluent neighborhoods. Left behind are half-foot stubs of metal, with wires that carry 120 volts neatly tied and wrapped in black electric tape.

"It's a newfound phenomenon; I have to say we haven't seen this before," a spokesman for the city's transportation department, David Brown, said. "Apparently, the culprits know what they're doing because we're talking about 30-foot poles here. It's not like you can stick one in a grocery cart and get rolling."

Some observers here -- in calls to talk radio programs, letters to newspapers, chats over a beer or coffee -- wonder how the thieves have eluded police for this long.

"If the cops can't catch guys who're cutting down 30-foot poles, how are they going to crack a major drug gang?" said Chip Franklin, a talk-show host on WBAL Radio, a local news and talk station. "What's next? Someone taking a downtown building?"

It will cost about $156,000 to replace each pole, the metal arms that extend over roads and the glass globes, city officials said.

Beyond the financial loss, Monroe said, the thefts could increase the danger of other crimes.

"From a public safety standpoint, what these thieves are doing is just horrible," she said. "People want well-lit areas when they're walking and when they're driving in the city."

Pole theft "is a crime," she said, "and we will actively pursue anybody" caught doing it or suspected of it.