ISRI at Your Service: New Efforts to Fight Materials Theft

March/April 2014

ISRI’s new strategy aims to keep the focus on preventing theft and prosecuting thieves while improving the perception of the scrap recycling industry.

By Kim Fernandez

Materials theft continues to be a problem, not just for scrap recyclers, but also for law enforcement agencies and victims of this crime around the country. Unfortunately, recyclers say, efforts to combat this crime often instead create burdens for them and have no impact on the thieves—or on those who look the other way when buying suspicious scrap. It’s a complex problem, but last fall the ReMA board approved a multi­pronged strategy to address it. The overarching goal, ReMA leaders say, is to make the recycling industry part of the solution to materials theft by reaching out to and working closely with law enforcement, prosecutors, and others to prevent theft and increase the likelihood that thieves and rogue operators are identified and put in jail.

Formation of the materials theft strategy began in 2012, when ReMA Chair Jerry Simms appointed a 15-member working group (listed on page 245) to determine what more ReMA can and should be doing to help its members more effectively address the problem. The group, with members from large and small yards all around the country, met five times in person and frequently via conference call to create the report that outlines the strategy, which it presented to the ReMA board at its October 2013 meeting.

ISRI’s materials theft efforts at the national level started more than 25 years ago with what was initially a theft alert fax service and later became the ScrapTheftAlert.com website. In recent years the association has increased its outreach to law enforcement associations and state and local law enforcement agencies, prosecutors and district attorneys, lawmakers, and industries heavily affected by theft, such as utilities, commercial bakeries, and beer distributors. At the same time, ReMA chapters, state recycling associations, and individual recyclers have been working in their communities to fight materials theft, reach out to law enforcement, and provide input to the lawmaking and regulatory processes. “Our members have long been proactive on the local level” in trying to address the problem, says Robin Wiener, ReMA president, but “ISRI recognized that we needed to ... figure out how we could do a more effective job of getting in front of this issue.”

The challenge is not only the crime itself. An even bigger issue, perhaps, is the perception that the scrap industry is part of the materials theft problem. If recyclers would stop buying scrap materials, this thinking goes, then criminals wouldn’t steal them. Thus, when local, state, and federal officials seek to address materials theft, they often do so by proposing laws and regulations that make it harder for recyclers to buy and sell scrap and have little to no effect on actually reducing crime, recyclers say. This is a serious misconception, explains Eva Shine, business manager of Shine Bros. Corp. (Spencer, Iowa) and chair of the working group. Recyclers “really want, at a very high level, to be part of the solution. We want laws to be consistent [among states] and address things that will have an impact on theft and materials [theft] law. And we want to be seen by the public, law enforcement, and the media as doing the right thing, which means having strong relationships with those stakeholders.”

Getting Into the Specifics

The working group’s first objective was to define what problems it was trying to solve. As the October report explains, it determined the scrap industry faces five separate but related problems:

1. Police and prosecutors are not aggressively enforcing existing laws and prosecuting the thieves due to resource limitations and the perception that metals theft is a “victimless” crime that’s a lower priority than other, “more serious” crimes.
2. As with any industry, the recycling industry has some bad players who don’t care about the theft issue and either knowingly or unknowingly are not in compliance with state and local laws.
3. Laws are inconsistent from community to community and state to state, creating a patchwork of requirements, many of which place an undue burden on the recycling industry and promote “forum-shopping” by thieves.
4. Some segment of the public, the law enforcement community, lawmakers, and regulators believes the recycling industry is part of the problem.
5. The thefts themselves are a problem, including the fact that it’s often difficult to distinguish stolen materials from those legitimately procured.

The working group also described what it believes success will look like, which allowed it to define concrete goals, regardless of how elusive they might seem. Success, it reported, would consist of the following:

• Unfortunately, despite all efforts, theft would continue—but, hopefully, at a lower rate. The report identified this as an “important reality.”
• The recycling industry would be perceived as part of the solution to materials theft.
• ISRI members would be complying with laws and regulations designed to stop theft.
• State laws would be consistent with one another, which would make compliance easier and act as a better deterrent to thieves.
• Any federal laws created to address the problem would be directed only toward the thieves and not create additional burdens for the scrap industry.
• The public and law enforcement agencies would see the industry as doing the right thing, and the media focus would be on thieves, not the recycling industry.
• There would be a strong working relationship between recyclers and law enforcement agencies, legislators, and other stakeholders.

With those determinations as its base, the working group came up with its new strategy for ISRI’s materials theft efforts. “It is a comprehensive, multiyear package,” says Danielle Waterfield, ISRI’s assistant counsel and director of government relations, who participated in the working group. The strategy contains five elements:

1. Launch a professionally developed training program for law enforcement professionals that focuses on their working together with recyclers to identify thieves, distinguishing stolen materials from legitimate scrap, understanding the scrap recycling industry, preventing materials theft, and using tools such as ScrapTheftAlert.com.
2. Expand ISRI’s outreach to priority stakeholders, who include police chiefs and sheriffs, district attorneys and prosecutors, and victims of materials theft.
3. Create an awareness campaign directed at stakeholders and the general public that will work to create a positive perception of ReMA and the industry, develop stronger relationships, stop thieves, and shut down rogue yards.
4. Advocate for smarter laws and regulations that deter theft while protecting the legitimate recycling industry.
5. Establish a proactive, visible industry compliance program so that recyclers better understand local and state materials-theft laws and how to follow them.

The working group’s report went on to provide details on each of those elements and how it envisions ReMA implementing them. The ReMA board gave its unanimous approval to the proposal—and funded it—at the fall 2013 board meeting, and the association set to work implementing the five elements
of the strategy.

Training

“The first aggressive effort is educating law enforcement,” Waterfield says. The goal, working group members say, is to explain to law enforcement the tools that are available to fight materials theft and engage them and other stakeholders in working with the scrap industry to do so.

“It’s upsetting to see how adversarial the relationship has been between recyclers and law enforcement,” says Chip Koplin, government and public affairs manager of Schnitzer Southeast (Macon, Ga.) and a member of the working group. With this effort, “we can start working together, which is fantastic. [ISRI members] can help educate law enforcement and the public.” With the proper outreach, he adds, he has found police departments and other agencies are eager to work with recyclers to solve materials theft.

As the working group’s discussions about law enforcement training evolved, it decided the effort would benefit from the input of representatives from that profession. Its report recommends that ReMA form a Law Enforcement Advisory Council consisting of public and private law enforcement officers and prosecutors from around the country committed to working with the association on the materials theft strategy.

The association recruited members for the advisory council in late 2013 and convened its first meeting to coincide with the ReMA leadership meetings held in January in Washington, D.C. At the meeting, the LEAC members—one assistant attorney general, two police chiefs, one sheriff, a deputy district attorney, corporate security officials from a railroad and two utilities, and two state law enforcement personnel (see the full list of members on page 246)—agreed that we all need to work together to help combat materials theft, Waterfield says.

“The formation of the LEAC has turned out to be the most significant and important step ReMA has taken so far,” Wiener says. “The LEAC members are excited about this effort and have enthusiastically shared their insights and experiences with ISRI, which has helped us reframe our strategy to better meet the needs of both law enforcement and the recycling industry,” she says.

The working group’s October 2013 report originally envisioned a training program delivered at the local, state, and national levels. A national conference would bring together leaders from the recycling industry, law enforcement, and others to raise awareness of the materials theft problem, discuss challenges they face in addressing it, and spread the word about best practices from around the country. That would be followed with a series of regional or state-based training programs focused on law enforcement and train-the-trainer programs for recyclers.

After the LEAC members reviewed the training proposal, however, “their message was clear: Keep the training as easy and inexpensive as possible, with no travel required,” Wiener says. “Instead of a national conference and state-based training programs, develop a 15- to 20-minute training video that law enforcement officers can watch during roll-call meetings. And instead of train-the-trainer programs for recyclers, train recyclers in how they can help prosecutors and law enforcement agencies make their case against the thieves.” The LEAC also suggested ReMA develop a set of best management practices, or protocols, for scale operators on how they can help identify, catch, and prosecute thieves.

ISRI is now working closely with the council to implement these ideas, Wiener says, starting with two ReMA convention workshops featuring LEAC members, both on Wednesday, April 9: “Prosecuting Materials Theft: What It Takes to Build a Case,” with Fred Burmester, deputy district attorney of Salt Lake County, Utah, and Candace Mosley, director of programs for the National District Attorneys Association (Alexandria, Va.), and “Enforcement Solutions to Materials Theft,” with Terrence Cunningham, chief of the Wellesley (Mass.) Police Department, and Richard Long of 3SI Security Systems (Exton, Pa.). (See the convention guide that begins on page 54 for more details.)

Outreach

Helping stakeholders such as law enforcement agencies and legislators understand why it’s important to address materials theft is one of the strategy’s goals. “Metals theft isn’t always a priority issue for law enforcement,” Waterfield says. “It’s a property crime, and property crime always takes a back seat to personal injury and other crimes of violence.”

In view of that goal, another very important result of ISRI’s establishment of the LEAC, Wiener says, is new and growing relationships with the National Sheriffs Association and the International Association of Chiefs of Police (both in Alexandria, Va.). The two associations have agreed to work with ReMA to help combat metals theft with communications and training. With LEAC members’ help, ReMA is developing similar relationships with the National District Attorneys Association (Alexandria, Va.) and the Association of Prosecuting Attorneys (Washington, D.C.).

The working group reaffirmed the importance of continuing other outreach work ReMA has undertaken with the two associations of state attorneys general, the Council of State Govern­ments (Lexington, Ky.), and the National Conference of State Legis­latures (Denver and Washington, D.C.).

Awareness

Another essential part of ISRI’s materials theft strategy is correcting the public’s—especially the media’s—perception that the recycling industry is part of the theft problem. As the working group’s report recommends, ReMA will launch a major public awareness campaign later this year to spread the word that the recycling industry is fighting materials theft. In addition to reaching out to the public and the press with news about the industry’s crime-fighting measures, ReMA plans to launch a new website, StopMetalsTheft.org, at its convention in April. The site—which will link to ScrapTheftAlert.com so site visitors can report thefts—will serve as a one-stop shop for tools and information about materials theft and how to combat it. It will provide content for a variety of stakeholders, including victims, community members, police, and prosecutors. The site will highlight member success stories, information on the scrap industry and its efforts to combat theft, and more.

ISRI also is launching a revamped ScrapTheftAlert.com website in March. LEAC members previewed the site and provided feedback at their January meeting. On the revamped site it will be easier to register, submit alerts, select multiple locations to receive alerts, and upload images and other information about a theft. An enhanced search function will allow custom searches by type of material—with new materials categories—region, date, and keywords. Users will be able to export search results to Excel and post success stories.

The recycling industry needs outreach that’s about more than just theft, however, working group members say. As Koplin puts it, “We hadn’t done a very good job of explaining what we do or how impressive an industry we are.” The industry’s desire to keep a low profile has left the public unaware of the role scrapyards play in a community. “We’re trying to help educate law enforcement and lawmakers on what our industry is about and why we’re so important to both the survival of the economy and the ecology,” says Rose Mock, president of Allied Scrap Processors (Lakeland, Fla.),

Advocacy

Legislation is something of a hot-button issue when it comes to materials theft. “If there’s going to be legislation, we want it to be smart legislation and effective legislation,” Shine says. “We want legislation to be written in a way that helps curb the theft but also allows us to run our businesses.”

When the working group began to discuss whether ReMA needs to change its position on materials theft laws, the discussions got heated. “There was a lot of cussing and discussing,” Mock says. “Everybody comes from a different part of the country and has different issues. ... And we had to understand each other and really do a lot of talking and figuring out how to move forward.”

At the group’s recommendation, ReMA sponsored a study by the Council of State Governments in 2013 on the effectiveness of various legislative approaches to curbing materials theft. To no one’s surprise, Wiener says, the study found there are no data to support any claim that one set of laws works and another doesn’t. “I hope the CSG study can counter arguments that certain legislative provisions, such as tag and hold, have a definitive effect on reducing crime,” she says.

With ReMA chapters, state recycling organizations, and individual companies taking on most of the lobbying responsibilities at the state and local levels, it’s important, Shine says, for those doing that work to understand lawmakers and how they make policy decisions, how best to approach them so they understand the recycling industry’s perspective—and to get all stakeholders on board. “If we don’t have buy-in from all of our stakeholders, a law may get passed that doesn’t have an effect on theft and isn’t best for our industry,” she points out. The result, Koplin says, can be “onerous legislation [that] isn’t helping eliminate metal theft,” but instead “just creates more administrative burden.”

The working group report recommends that ReMA bolster member efforts on the state level with a lobbying toolkit that provides data on the recycling industry’s economic impact in each state, background information on the industry, guidance on how to conduct a variety of advocacy activities, potential responses to various legislative approaches to materials theft, talking points on hot-button issues, and more. ReMA plans to put the toolkit online.

After discussing what ISRI’s position should be on federal materials theft laws, the working group expressed a “clear preference for no federal law out of concern [about the] involvement of FBI and federal enforcement authorities,” according to its report. The group recommended, however, that ReMA continue advocating for a “thieves-only” federal bill that focuses on protecting critical infrastructure. Doing so, the group says, gives ReMA an “opportunity to work positively on [Capitol Hill]” on this issue without risking federal enforcement and adding another layer of unnecessary requirements on recyclers.

Compliance

For the materials theft strategy to succeed, ReMA members must been seen “walking the talk.” In other words, they can’t just say they’re working against materials theft; they must show it, too, by complying with state and local laws. “This isn’t something ReMA national can do alone,” Waterfield says. “What we as an industry can do will involve [the national office], our chapters, and members in the states—all levels of ISRI.”

To help achieve that goal, ReMA has developed a 49-state compliance primer to help members understand the laws in each state and how to follow them. (Why 49 states? Alaska does not have a materials theft law, although one has been proposed in the current legislative session.) The PDF document can be downloaded from the ReMA website at www.isri.org/metaltheft.

Some members will need to be convinced their compliance matters, Koplin says. “We’ve needed to show the industry that the major problem we’re having is our perception,” he says. He hopes more ReMA members will make the effort to ensure their compliance and get involved in state and local advocacy efforts. Industry buy-in is essential, Mock says. “We have pockets and areas that have been very successful,” she says, where ReMA members have worked together and with other stakeholders to fight materials theft and ensure laws target the criminals and not the scrap industry. “We need to take those [success stories] and share them.”

Kim Fernandez is a writer based in Bethesda, Md.

ISRI Materials Theft Working Group

Jerry Simms, ReMA chair/executive vice president, Atlas Metal & Iron Corp. (Denver)

Eva Shine, working group chair/business manager, Shine Bros. Corp. (Spencer, Iowa)

George Adams, chairman, SA Recycling (Orange, Calif.)

Chris Bedell, senior vice president/general counsel, The David J. Joseph Co. (Cincinnati)

Gene Day, president, Hobbs Iron & Metal (Hobbs, N.M.)

Jeff Farano, corporate legal counsel/government affairs, SA Recycling (Orange, Calif.)

Howard Glick, president, Tri-State Iron & Metal Co. (Texarkana, Ark.)

Chip Koplin, government and public affairs manager, Schnitzer Southeast (Macon, Ga.)

Doug Kramer, ReMA chair-elect/president, Kramer Metals (Los Angeles)

Mike Lewis, president, Lewis Salvage Corp. (Warsaw, Ind.)

Scott Miller, chief corporate counsel, safety, health, environment, and compliance, Sims Metal Management (New York)

Rose Mock, president, Allied Scrap Processors (Lakeland, Fla.)

Shelley Padnos, executive vice president for administration, PADNOS (Holland, Mich.)

Mike Potash, Sioux City Compressed Steel Co. (Sioux City, Iowa)

Chip Terhune, former director of environmental and public affairs, Schnitzer Steel
Industries (Portland, Ore.)

ISRI’S LAW ENFORCEMENT ADVISORY COUNCIL

ISRI’s Law Enforcement Advisory Council advises ReMA on its strategy to fight materials theft, including by developing best practices and law enforcement training, and helps ReMA and its members build partnerships with local, regional, and federal law enforcement organizations around the country. ReMA has named the following individuals to the council:

Rick Arrington, crime prevention program manager, Virginia Department of Criminal Justice Services, division of law enforcement, Richmond, Va.

RenEarl Bowie, assistant director, Texas Department of Public Safety, Austin, Texas

Willis Allan Brown, Colorado division director [of] police, Union Pacific, Denver.

Fred Burmester, deputy district attorney, Salt Lake County, Utah

Hugh T. Clements, City of Providence police chief, Providence, R.I.

Terrence Cunningham, vice president, International Association of Chiefs of Police, and chief of police, Wellesley Police Department, Wellesley, Mass.

Bethanna Feist,* assistant attorney general, State of South Dakota, Pierre, S.D.

David Hempen, manager, business continuity and security investigations, MidAmerican Energy Co., Des Moines, Iowa

Aaron D. Kennard, executive director, National Sheriffs’ Association, Alexandria, Va.

Jerry Uhler, corporate security, Southern California Edison/Edison International, Rancho Cucamonga, Calif.

* In March, Feist left the South Dakota attorney general’s office. Replacing her on the LEAC is Jody Swanson, director of the office’s consumer protection division.