January/February 1998
Mounted on excavators or other machines mobile shears give scrap processors the cutting edge they need when processing ferrous and nonferrous material.
By Eileen Zagone
Eileen Zagone is an associate editor of Scrap.
One gray and stormy morning, while Joe Recycler was finishing his second cup of coffee, he received a call from the local police department. The officer said that a load of copper scrap had been stolen the previous night from a nearby construction site. The thief, he surmised, would likely try to sell the ill-gotten scrap to a local processor to get some quick cash.
"Can you get the word out?" the officer asked."
"No problem," Joe replied.
He turned to his computer and with a few quick clicks of the mouse, he broadcast the details—the material's appearance and weight, when the theft occurred, a description of the vehicle seen leaving the site, and who to call if the material crossed the scale—to other scrap processors in the area.
By lunchtime, Joe was a hero. A recycler across town had recovered the stolen material, and the suspect had been apprehended. By the time Joe finished his sandwich, the thief was en route to the police station and the material was on its way home.
"All in a day's work," Joe said. "It's just another faxnet success story."
While this particular story may be hypothetical, the effectiveness of fax networks—nicknamed faxnets—is no fiction. Scenes like this one are happening more and more around the country as scrap processors, armed with nothing but their fax machines, team up with local police to flex the muscles of the long arm of the law to catch thieves trying to sell stolen material as legitimate scrap.
The Theft Problem
The problem of identifying stolen scrap is hardly new to the scrap industry. Since scrap materials are commonly traded commodities with monetary value, they can be a prime target for theft and illegal sale, especially during strong markets when scrap prices are high.
For processors who buy scrap over the scale from retail suppliers, the principal problem has always been: How do you determine which material is legitimate and which could be stolen?
Sometimes, it's obvious that scrap is stolen. One processor recalls a truckload of copper scrap that cruised over his scale a few years ago. The load contained unopened boxes that were plainly marked as the property of the local electric utility. A prompt call to the utility's security department confirmed that the copper material—which was worth more than $20,000—had been stolen by an employee.
Other processors note that items such as street signs, gas and water meters, aluminum light poles, traffic lights, and cemetery markers are always questioned and verified unless the material is brought in by a manufacturer of those items, another scrap processor, or a demolition contractor.
Those are the easy cases, however. What about the majority of scrap that doesn't automatically raise a red flag? Burnt copper wire is, after all, burnt copper wire. In such cases, processors can become unsuspecting buyers of stolen material.
To try and "fix" the stolen scrap problem, a handful of localities have repeatedly tried to pass—and sometimes succeeded in imposing—tag-and-hold legislation, so-called because it generally requires scrap processors to tag all retail material they buy over the scale and hold it for anywhere from three to 15 days. These laws can also require processors to photograph, fingerprint, interrogate, and get extensive identification on every retail supplier, and then send the collected information to the police daily, according to Steve Levetan of Resource Services (Atlanta), who serves as legislative affairs director for ReMA's Southeastern Chapter.
Under such requirements, it becomes obvious that the punished party isn't the thief, but the processor. "It seems like the threat of tag-and-hold comes up every few years or so in our area—whenever theft gets to be a big problem," says one scrap executive, noting that in many states, a vague law affecting pawnshop goods is also sometimes interpreted to include scrap materials. "They just don't understand that tag-and-hold doesn't work." Levetan agrees, adding that "no one has been able to demonstrate that tag-and-hold has resulted in the apprehension, arrest, and conviction of any thieves."
Processors maintain that tag-and-hold laws pose an unfair administrative, logistical, and financial burden on them. It's more reasonable, they suggest, for them to address the problem of stolen scrap by recording each retail supplier's driver's license, social security, and/or license plate number. For added security, some even videotape their retail scale area or take a photo of every retail supplier.
And then, of course, there are faxnets, which scrap processors and localities are implementing as an alternative to tag-and-hold requirements. Such networks are, in short, the latest and potentially greatest weapon to prevent stolen materials from entering the scrap recycling stream.
A Faxable Solution
Daryl Parks, general manager of American Iron & Supply Inc. (Minneapolis), is one scrap processor who knows about the merits of a scrap faxnet.
About five years ago, Minneapolis proposed a 14-day holding period on over-the-scale purchases of scrap by local processors. Parks and some other recyclers met with the city's police department and managed to eliminate this tag-and-hold threat by starting a faxnet program.
In general, faxnet programs work like this: A locality's police department or a scrap processor receives news of stolen scrap. The police or the designated faxnet administrator—such as Joe Recycler in the hypothetical example—then faxes details on the stolen material to all retail processors in the area so they can be on the lookout and contact authorities if the material crosses their scale.
Sounds easy, right?
Not so fast. Before you can establish an effective faxnet, you have to first enlist the cooperation and support of scrap processors in your area. If all processors who buy retail scrap aren't "with the program," the faxnet system will be like a sieve in that thieves will always have a few locations where they can sell stolen material. In addition to calling other processors directly, you can rally support for your proposed faxnet program at industry gatherings such as ReMA chapter meetings. Depending on the geographic spread of the chapter's members, it may be wise to integrate the program with another chapter since scrap knows few boundaries.
While it's important to get all processors in your area onboard, it's even more essential to gain the support and participation of your local police department. "That's easy," you say. "After all, I'm helping them do their job."
Unfortunately, scrap faxnets aren't always an easy sell to law enforcement officials because of their misconceptions about the industry, skepticism about the benefits of such programs, preference for tag-and-hold requirements, and other reasons.
Fortunately for Parks and other Minneapolis processors, this wasn't the case when they embarked on their faxnet program. Over the years, he says, American Iron & Supply had employed several off-duty police officers as security guards. This gave them an inside view of a scrap operation, which helped them be instrumental in getting other law enforcement officials behind the faxnet and preventing the city's proposed tag-and-hold requirements.
But how can you get your local police department behind your program? For starters, talk with them about their perceptions of the scrap industry, and invite them to tour your operation and drop by any time. Encourage other processors in the area to adopt this same kind of open-door friendliness with the police.
Once they understand how the business works and you've established a good rapport, discuss the faxnet idea, reviewing how it would work and your respective responsibilities in the program.
After you secure their support for the faxnet, you need to select a central administrator for the program—the person who will be the conduit through which all scrap theft information flows. Either the police or a scrap processor can assume this role. In Minneapolis, for instance, the police are responsible for faxing information on stolen scrap to processors in the area.
Let's assume that you volunteer to be the central administrator of your area's faxnet program. How are you supposed to disseminate information to dozens of processors without spending the day at the fax machine dialing number after number?
Don't worry. There's now fax broadcast computer software that enables you to scan documents once and automatically send the information to a list of fax numbers in a fraction of the time it would take to send them manually.
For a real-life testimonial of how well this works, talk with Fred Bonnett, president of Davis Industries Inc. (Lorton, Va.) and administrator of the faxnet of ReMA's Seaboard Chapter, who has a dedicated fax line for sending out faxnet information. After he obtained the fax numbers of all local processors of retail scrap who wished to participate, the rest was easy, he says. He sends out an average of four faxnet faxes a week in a geographic area that includes Richmond, Va., northern Baltimore, and western Maryland. Most of his theft tips come from police, while others come from processors. "The faxnet helps all of us—scrap processors and police," Bonnett says.
To Catch a Thief
So you've established a faxnet program and have earned the honor of serving as its central administrator. Congratulations. Now how do you make sure the system works?
Time—that is, promptness—is a key factor. Police and the central administrator must be dedicated to disseminating information as quickly as possible. Here again, police understanding of the scrap industry is crucial. If the police don't understand how quickly material moves through a processing operation, for example, they might not act with urgency in getting the word out about a theft. "Scrap processors have to impress upon the police that they have to get that information out to the coordinator immediately," says Scott Horne, ReMA's director of state and local programs. In some instances, he notes, police have let reports of stolen scrap sit in their boxes for several days. And by the time they disseminate the information to area processors, the stolen material has likely been sold by the thieves and long since processed.
Given this scenario, it's a good idea, Parks suggests, to follow up regularly with your local police to ask about any scrap theft updates and ensure that they stay vigilant in communicating such information.
Sending out the information is only part of the program, however. For a faxnet to be successful, the recipients of the theft information must be equally conscientious about alerting their key personnel—especially the scale operator—about the stolen material.
To help ensure that faxnet information is both easy to recognize and act on, all communiques should provide as much information as possible and be consistent in terms of content and appearance. Following is a list of suggested information to include in faxnet alerts.
- Type of material
- Approximate weight
- Distinguishing features (if any), such as unique shape or color
- Date of theft
- Description of vehicle (if known)
- Description of suspects (if known)
- Company or person the material was stolen from
- Contact person and phone number
- Special instructions, such as "please try to detain by unloading material slowly" or "please buy the material and victim will reimburse you."
Case Closed
Though there are no formal statistics on the effectiveness of faxnets, participants attest that their systems have proved effective—especially at intercepting large loads of stolen scrap—and have resulted in a number of arrests. "In many cases, the faxnet works great," Horne says, adding that such systems "have been responsible for the recovery of hundreds of thousands of dollars of stolen scrap over the years."
Law enforcement officials seem to agree. In Tampa, in fact, after scrap processors established a faxnet, Terry Payne, a sergeant in the city's burglary bureau, noted in a letter to Steve Levetan that the city "experienced a drastic decrease in the number of reported burglaries and thefts of aluminum and copper." Likewise, Parks says that the number of scrap thefts in the Minneapolis area has decreased considerably since he and his colleagues started their faxnet.
Of course, faxnets can't and don't catch everything, especially small quantities of material. For just such instances, some scrap processors are firm believers in conversion insurance coverage. This coverage, available through some insurance carriers, can help defray or, in some cases, totally cover losses associated with buying stolen material in good faith.
While faxnets are far from a panacea for the persistent problem of stolen scrap, they do give processors a heightened degree of protection—and another weapon to use in this ongoing battle. And it doesn't hurt that along the way, faxnets can help processors improve relations with their community and local police while they catch some thieves red-handed with some red-hot scrap—like the red metal, of course. •
Mounted on excavators or other machines mobile shears give scrap processors the cutting edge they need when processing ferrous and nonferrous material.