Putting the screws to metal thieves

[depakid]

T ravel posters? River views? Oregon Capitol-quality furniture? Jeff Steinfeld's cramped office at Far West Fibers on Southeast 17th Avenue has none of the above. But it does feature fresh subpoenas demanding that Steinfeld drag himself downtown and appear in two Multnomah County grand courtrooms before the end of the month.

"Our badges of honor," he says.

Our cue for a standing ovation.

Steinfeld is the supervisor of a five-man crew at the Far West transfer station on Southeast 17th, a battered platoon of green drop boxes that accepts recycling debris from garbage haulers, small businesses and neighborhood greenies.

Steinfeld, 34, has been squeezing a profit out of recyclables since he was a wiry 9-year-old with a wagon, but he had something of an epiphany six months ago when one of Far West Fibers' regular customers showed up with shoring equipment from a ditch-digging operation.

"Right away, I knew he'd stolen this out of someone's truck," Steinfeld said. "And that means some guy is going to work tomorrow and the stuff he uses to keep the sides of the ditch from falling in won't be in the back of his truck."

Far West has a long history with cardboard, but the company is new to metals, thanks largely to demand that has driven up the price of steel from $20 to $200 per ton in the past three years. Steinfeld knew that if he didn't buy the shoring equipment, the guy would simply take it to one of the smaller metal recyclers where no one asks any questions.

So, Steinfeld bought the stuff.

Then he called Portland police. The beginning of a beautiful friendship....

...Fire hose nozzles with the serial numbers filed off. Five hundred feet of coaxial cable. Bronze plaques from an Oregon City apartment complex.

"We've had some really big busts in the last month, some really cool ones," Steinfeld said. Just after the Fourth of July, some clown brought in a collection of brass vases on a Sunday that, Steinfeld realized, had been lifted from a graveyard.

When the guy returned Monday for his cash payment, the police were waiting for him. "The vases turned out to have been stolen from Willamette National Cemetery," Steinfeld said, "so everyone here feels really good about that one. We were giving one another a lot of high-fives that day."

More: http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/steve_duin/index.ssf?/base/news/1218511518125970.xml&coll=7&thispage=2

[realisticphish]

1. cool

way to take initiative :thumbsup:

[PetrusMonsFormicarum]

2. Smart metal recyclers

know that policing their own operations has multiple benefits: they won't get busted as accessories to any crime. By taking down personal information, they scare away the unsavory types. And by helping to capture assholes that cut up bronze markers from veterans' cemeteries, the metal recyclers become public heroes whom legitimate citizens and businesses are only too happy to work with, thus increasing the flow of recycled materials, which is good for everybody.

I am sick to death of fucking tweaker metal thieves.

[depakid]

3. Very wise, indeed- even though ostensibly, they're doing this at their own expense

"They pay the tweakers. They turn the stuff over to the proper owners. And they eat it," said Portland police Sgt. Scott Westerman. "That's their business ethic. In Southeast Precinct, this is the only business I know that does this."

This sort of deal pays real dividends in the end.

[PetrusMonsFormicarum]

4. I'm a regular at Far West

which takes much more materials than our curbside recycling. I always slip a few bucks into the donation box when I drop off stuff; now I think I'll slip 'em a few more.