No, it's not the gold-diggers in the bu$ine$$ section:
"Thieves hitting the streets for a heavy fixture" by Billy Baker | Globe Staff, January 01, 2014
The work-to-reward ratio of stealing a 325-pound hunk of metal out of a public street and then lugging it somewhere to scrap it for not much more than a $20 bill seems on the low side.
But it has been happening in Boston recently, and a lot.
Then it is a sign of the failed alleged recovery where all the loot has gone up. It's a confirmation, in fact! This proves how de$perate people!
Or maybe it is something else altogether.
Police say that a thief is — or, more likely, thieves are — making off with the big cast-iron grates that cover storm sewer catch basins at an alarming rate. At least 55 have disappeared since November. They’ve vanished so quickly that police this week issued a public appeal, asking residents to be on the lookout for suspicious vehicles idling near curbs.
In addition to the terrorists, et al?
And not trying to be a poop, but WHAT ABOUT ALL the CAMERAS ALL OVER the PLACE? Didn't see a damn thing?
This story is starting to stink like a sewer, folks!
Stealing metal to sell as scrap is nothing new, but these crimes have become head-scratchers.
I'm scratching my bald pate.
Even if a thief were able to find a place willing to take what is clearly a massive iron grate straight from a gutter, the person may get only eight cents on the pound at a scrap yard.
Oh, I LOVE THAT in a REPORT! EVEN IF! That's better than any still or but!
That’s a lot of grunt work for 26 bucks. And the take would probably have to be split at least two ways, because anyone who has ever tangled with one will tell you it’s a two-man job to wrestle the huge metal grate.
Unless it is an organized ring; then the question becomes WHO would NEED CAST IRON and for WHAT PURPOSE? Bunkers? Battleships?
So HOW MUCH does the HERNIA SURGERY COST? More than $13 bucks?
Thank God there is now Obummercare. Won't take long to solve this crime. Who just had hernia surgery in the greater Boston area?
“That’s a very involved, very random way to commit a crime,” Shara Maynard, 23, said at the intersection of Bakersfield and Mayfield streets in Dorchester, the scene of a recent theft. “I think they need to think about what they’re doing with their lives.”
Don't random and involved cancel each other out?
Anyway....
Police say the thefts have been occurring on Friday nights into Saturday morning, leaving a dangerous cavity more than 2 feet square, capable of swallowing a person or the wheel of a car with no problem. Below is a 9-foot hole, usually half full of storm water runoff.
I suppose that will make it easier for the mob to dump bodies.
No police patrols anywhere during this time, 'eh? What are the cops doing, parking at the D&D for the night? Too many other crimes in the safe, $afe city?
The police alert comes after a recent spate of more than 20 thefts in Roxbury, Hyde Park, Jamaica Plain, Mattapan, and Dorchester, including the intersection of Bay and Maryland streets in Savin Hill, where thieves took three covers from the quiet area.
And no one heard a thing? Not even a clang or grunt?
Janice Maloof, who was unloading tools at her boss’s house at that intersection on Tuesday afternoon, said the news strangely didn’t surprise her. “It’s Dorchester. You see everything. As long as the thieves stay out of Quincy,” where she lives.
It's shallowness and superficiality don't surprise me anymore.
And you gotta love the attitude! Don't give a f*** about your town, just care about me and my turf!
But she is already too late.
Oh, well.
Quincy has been going through its own rash of recent thefts. In the last six months, the city has been hit at least 20 times by catch basin bandits, including a few in broad daylight.
But what is happening now, in Boston, is unprecedented, according to John Sullivan, the chief engineer at the Boston Water and Sewer Commission.
“Occasionally you see them missing, but there’s a reason they don’t usually go anywhere, and that’s because it takes two people to wrestle them, and I mean wrestle them,” said Sullivan, whose workers generally don’t go near them without a hydraulic lift.
Yeah, at least two -- and what is this about a hydraulic lift used by the workers? Could this be some sort of INSIDE JOB? Why the MYSTERY? Where are the CAMERAS?
Globe Sewer $tench!
One person can pull one out with a crow bar, and then tilt it on its side, but it’s a beast to lift from there, Sullivan said.
“I can’t imagine trying to lift one up onto a flatbed truck, and I pity the poor truck,” he said.
Unless you have a city-supplied hydraulic lift that wouldn't attract attention from people, right? Just the city doin' work -- or someone looking like the city.
Of course, no one is around on Friday nights (or any other night) in Boston. That's why the T needs to be expanded to late night.
Yup, no one would notice nothing. You smell that sewer, readers!?
In the past, Sullivan said, the agency has experienced periods when people stole manhole covers — apparently in some cases to use as the base for a mushroom anchor for a boat mooring. But they’re 100 pounds lighter and you can roll them.
So it is the shipyards and people working for them?
“But these things are so ridiculous to move that I want them to catch them just so I can see what they look like,” Sullivan said. “If it’s a bunch of teenage girls I’m going to be really embarrassed and our guys are going out for exercise.”
This is turning into ridiculousness as we get way off topic.
So WHO has ACCESS to HYDRAULIC LIFTS?
The covers cost $196 each, plus roughly $150 in labor costs for the crew to install them, which is done immediately because of the public safety issue. The city has about 100 currently on reserve.
Now please stick with me on this one: this is to WHO$E BENEFIT?
I know it is "too conspiratorial" but could the THIEVES be the SUPPLY COMPANIES and CITY WORKERS? One must ALWAYS ASK who benefits! I suppo$e it's worth the $26 bucks split however many ways. And just forget all those government and $ecurity company hackers pu$hing that $elf-$erving agenda forward.
Let's check the scrap yards (police surely have already been there, right?).
No local scrap yards were willing to talk on the record, but one worker said it is just one of those common-sense things they do not buy, like brass cemetery markers. “Only junkies try to sell things like that, and junkies know not to come here,” he said.
What kind of junkies? Certainly not skinny heroin addicts. It would take an army of them to lift one of those things.
The thieves remain at large, and where they will strike next is anyone’s guess, because they have plenty of targets, 30,000 of them, worth three-quarters of a million dollars in very, very heavy metal.
Cast iron is poor man's gold?
Good thing Boston is LOADED with CAMERAS! Be on the lookout for suspicious vehicles overnight because we don't know where the terrorists, 'er, thieves will strike next even with all the tools of tyranny available! What an abysmal failure! -- almost as much of a failure as this blog.
Sorry, readers.
--more--"
Btw, those aren't even gold bars.
