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An Ohio Valley 100k-watt FM signal is severed in broad daylight

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Re: An Ohio Valley 100k-watt FM signal is severed in broad daylight

#241

Post by toast0 »

jmward01 wrote: post #77
tshaddox wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn’t the most obvious response from economics that the crime needs to be made more expensive? In other words, the likelihood of being harmed while attempting the crime needs to be much higher. If a quarter of the people who tried a comparable theft got thrown in jail for 2 years and another quarter got shot by a security guard, I suspect attempts would be rare. The financial damage done by the thief is presumably ir…

I highly doubt the people doing this look at crime and punishment stats before they do this. More punishment often just ends up costing society because courts and incarceration aren't cheap and no real rehabilitation so it often just makes the person do more bad things when they get out. I'm not saying 'no jail', but we do need evidence based criminal justice.

They probably didn't independently come up with the idea to steal cables or catalytic converters either.

It's all word of mouth. But if half your buddies get shot [1] or jailed when they steal cables for drugs, it probably doesn't seem like such a good idea.

Same thing when your buddy finally fills their trailer full of cats and brings them to the scrap yard to find out they can't get anything from that anymore. Unfortunately, there's a lag, but afaik, cat thefts drop pretty reliably after they become economically useless... not all the way to zero, some people don't get the news very fast.

[1] this is not an endorsement of lethal force to deter cable theft

Re: An Ohio Valley 100k-watt FM signal is severed in broad daylight

#242

Post by jcalvinowens »

bArray wrote: post #134

I'm surprised nothing more serious happened. There was obviously a serious electrocution risk, but I think that is the easiest bit to deal with. 100kW of radio waves, whilst non-ironising, can still microwave you. With 100kW there could have also been a serious reflection back to the transmitter. This guy cutting the cable is far luckier than he will ever know.

[dead]

Re: An Ohio Valley 100k-watt FM signal is severed in broad daylight

#243

Post by dmitrygr »

silisili wrote: post #139

Kentucky for some reason has an epidemic of this. My father lives in the middle of nowhere in a perfectly safe area, yet still at least once or twice a year someone steals the phone or power lines leading to outages. I live in a similar area in another state and it's nearly unheard of. I wish they'd up the severity of these crimes - people willing to damage infrastructure for everyone else just to make drug money are…

  > for some reason
Do the perps get prosecuted? Do the places that buy stolen copper? Is it publicized? Are punishments large enough to provide a detriment? Are repeat offenders properly contained long term? No? Well then ... it's a mystery

Re: An Ohio Valley 100k-watt FM signal is severed in broad daylight

#244

Post by MisterTea »

testing22321 wrote: post #233
MisterTea wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Years ago we were cleaning out our shop and had to scrap a lot of metal. At the scrap yard in Brooklyn there was a separate line for copper and aluminum vs iron and steel which was mostly a bulk dump job. Seemed like half of the line were homeless and destitute people. Many had shopping carts full of various pieces of aluminum and whatever, lots of AC condensers and copper tubing. There was a couple ahead of me, skin…

Should we police the scrap yards, or help the fellow citizens who are “skinny, toothless, ragged and smelled of BO and urine” What a place to live.

What have you done to help your fellow citizens? I've been down the path of helping deeply addicted people and learned many hard lessons. Some people can be helped more easily than others. Some are almost impossible without constant professional help that is financially impossible to afford by 99% of the population.

Re: An Ohio Valley 100k-watt FM signal is severed in broad daylight

#245

Post by dmitrygr »

testing22321 wrote: post #232
silisili wrote: post #139

Kentucky for some reason has an epidemic of this. My father lives in the middle of nowhere in a perfectly safe area, yet still at least once or twice a year someone steals the phone or power lines leading to outages. I live in a similar area in another state and it's nearly unheard of. I wish they'd up the severity of these crimes - people willing to damage infrastructure for everyone else just to make drug money are…

> Kentucky for some reason has an epidemic of this The link between poverty and crime has been a stab listed for centuries

https://www.independent.org/article/2026/05/18/does-poverty-...

Re: An Ohio Valley 100k-watt FM signal is severed in broad daylight

#246

Post by [deleted] »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #116
7402 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm surprised. Consulting an exposure limit calculator ( https://www.arrl.org/rf-exposure-calculator ) suggests a safe distance (FCC controlled exposure limit) for continuous (30 min) exposure from a 100w FM transmitter antenna at 100 MHz with, say, 5 dB gain is around 5 ft. For a brief exposure it's much less. Amateur radio operators need to know this, since 100w is quite a typical power level, and they have bands (…

Maybe like 1-2 feet away i was manually adjusting something on the top of a 8 foot radio tower on vandenburg hall at USAFA.

[deleted]

Re: An Ohio Valley 100k-watt FM signal is severed in broad daylight

#247

Post by pixl97 »

stronglikedan wrote: post #236
pjc50 wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> people willing to damage infrastructure for everyone else Cable theft is particularly destructive because it's so value-destroying. $100k of cable destroyed for a maximum profit of $1k. Or in this particularly egregious UK case, a multimillion pound artwork destroyed for £1,500 scrap value: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2009/may/17/henry-m... I also think that stereotypes make people underestimate rural…

> a multimillion pound artwork destroyed for £1,500 scrap value I think a more apt comparison would be the retail value of the metal compared to the scrap value, since the "multimillion" is more of a subjective artistic value. Egregious nonetheless.

Eh, retail value of the metal doesn't include the hours in shaping it, transporting and mounting it. It's still hundreds of thousands in value versus $1500 scrap.

Re: An Ohio Valley 100k-watt FM signal is severed in broad daylight

#248

Post by pixl97 »

MisterTea wrote: post #226
FatherOfCurses wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a mystery to me why the scrap metal industry doesn't have more scrutiny given how much copper is stolen.

Years ago we were cleaning out our shop and had to scrap a lot of metal. At the scrap yard in Brooklyn there was a separate line for copper and aluminum vs iron and steel which was mostly a bulk dump job. Seemed like half of the line were homeless and destitute people. Many had shopping carts full of various pieces of aluminum and whatever, lots of AC condensers and copper tubing. There was a couple ahead of me, skin…

In the US you typically have to give identification to sell scrap, so it sets up a chain of evidence against you. Still doesn't stop methheads.

Re: An Ohio Valley 100k-watt FM signal is severed in broad daylight

#249

Post by browsingonly »

Ylpertnodi wrote: post #234
4gotunameagain wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not true, it is a false analogy. The war on drugs has been a definite failure, but we can see the effects of lower punishment for low hanging crimes in the decriminalization of shoplifting in california.

Isn't the cali-decriminalization of shoplifting designed to avoid people going to jail.....for the health care they'll receive?

That's laughably false propaganda. Maybe one person one time stole something for jail health care, but the hundreds of thousands of other shoplifters do it for other reasons, ranging from being unable or unwilling to control their childish I-want-that impulses to being part of organized crime rings.

To pretend shoplifting at its core stems from not having socialized health care is the height of chicanery.

Re: An Ohio Valley 100k-watt FM signal is severed in broad daylight

#250

Post by pixl97 »

dmitrygr wrote: post #243
silisili wrote: post #139

Kentucky for some reason has an epidemic of this. My father lives in the middle of nowhere in a perfectly safe area, yet still at least once or twice a year someone steals the phone or power lines leading to outages. I live in a similar area in another state and it's nearly unheard of. I wish they'd up the severity of these crimes - people willing to damage infrastructure for everyone else just to make drug money are…

> for some reason Do the perps get prosecuted? Do the places that buy stolen copper? Is it publicized? Are punishments large enough to provide a detriment? Are repeat offenders properly contained long term? No? Well then ... it's a mystery

The for some reason is a meth epidemic.

>Do the perps get prosecuted?

Pretty often, but drug addicts are rather senseless and do stuff anyway.

>Do the places that buy stolen copper?

Sometimes. Like any criminal enterprise there are groups that launder stolen metals and turn them into 'good' metals.

> Are punishments large enough to provide a detriment

Depending on what you do, it can be a felony, which in this case is likely 1-5 years, with each repeat offense adding more.

https://www.wdrb.com/news/louisville-mayor-signs-new-ordinan...

the TL;DR here is the theft is a second order effect that you're not going to stop because the people that are doing it are horrifically addicted to meth which overrides any idea in their brain but doing something to get them more meth.

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