Colorado Range Steel Stolen

[40xs]

Here's a double whammy; My x-boss had a metal dock board stolen from his loading dock and we actually heard the "clanging" when the scumbags were loading it up but were too late getting out of the warehouse to catch them. We found it at the salvage yard but because the salvage yard broke no laws it buying it the boss had to pay to get it back. that sucks!!

 

[BigJimFish]

I find theft of infrastructure one of the most worrying trends. Let me put it this way, nobody was pulling the spigots off the public fountains during the height of the Roman empire but in the middle ages the Forum was used as a quarry and one Pope stole the bronze from the Pantheon's portico. I'm just saying, when folks start walking off with your infrastructure you are an empire in decline. I don't know about how things go out Colorado way but from what I hear, around here, the same folks bring in stolen air conditioners and scrap every day and never get charged. I guess the thinking must be that the city stands to loose money if they do given that the trial will cost more than what little you would get out of the perps. As long as the stuff stolen is private infrastructure the city looses nothing. It is therefore a better allocation of police officers to have them running traffic duty where they bring in several hundred dollars an hour in revenue. Next time you drive slowly though Ohio count the officers doing traffic duty per hour driven on the highway. The average seems to be about 6 putting them only 10 miles or so apart on average.

You might laugh at that reasoning, but right now someone is selling scrap and not being arrested and there are more than 14 cruisers between Columbus and Cleavland writing tickets. Maybe no one person made the call to value tickets over infrastructure, but the call has been made and it wasn't the officers who made it.

 

[BigJimFish]

On a different note: how are you supposed to secure your range steel when anything you could use to tie it down would presumably also be of value to the thief?

I guess at some point we will have to start cutting serial numbers into the steel plates during manufacture so we can prove they are ours when we pick them back up at the scrap yard.

 

[earthquake]

Next time you drive slowly though Ohio count the officers doing traffic duty per hour driven on the highway. The average seems to be about 6 putting them only 10 miles or so apart on average.

I know what you mean! I'm originally from Columbus and whenever I drive back to visit family, I don't see nary a hwy patrol on that 1,300 mile trip but for the last 100 miles between the Indiana border and C-bus....then they're everywhere!

 

[flatlander]

Hate to hear this. one year ago, 2 teenage meth-heads broke into my barn and stole $1800 worth of AR 500 steel targets/ Poppers that we used for our match and sold it to a local Recycler for a paltry $176. Luckily we caught them about 2 weeks later when one of them saw me with the local cops investigating the crime scene.
They pled out and are now in the process of paying restitution which I still don't believe I'll ever see it all paid.

Hope you catch them or better yet, find the steel

 

[Matt in Virginia]

fwiw,
I've had AR-500 hanging silhouettes stolen from my own property. They were concealed in an end row WELL under the trees. The pathetic part is they took the new AR-500 and left the older stuff with hot spots alone. Here is a Pic and they were stolen from Chesapeake, Virginia should anyone have any input...

Regards, Matt Garrett
757-581-6270

 

[40xs]

correct me if i'm wrong but I believe that even pawn shops are immune to being held culpable when buying stolen stuff because they have no duty to know beforehand that the item is "hot".

 

[orkan]

I'm not a lawyer, or a cop, or a thief... but every instance that I've heard of a pawn shop or anyone buying stolen property, they lose the property AND their money. "Receiving stolen property" or some such law.

 

[Easy_E]

We were shooting on state land in northern Michigan along an Orv trail. We stopped because we heard a quad coming and the rider noticed the orange in the field. He rode up got off and looked at the target. He looked around quickly then slowly looked out to about 900 yards . I know he shit himself seeing three guys with rifles. Dust was flying when he left.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I747 using Tapatalk

 

[Deadshot2]

I'm not a lawyer, or a cop, or a thief... but every instance that I've heard of a pawn shop or anyone buying stolen property, they lose the property AND their money. "Receiving stolen property" or some such law.

In almost every state Pawn shops are required to check police notices of stolen items and report when someone attempts to pawn them. In my local town I used to see, almost daily, a police response to the local "Pawn X-Change" location. They usually had one or two "tweaker types" sitting on the curb in handcuffs.

Because the Pawn Shops loose both the merchandise AND the money they paid out, they're pretty cautious when dealing with "high risk" items.

Recyclers, on the other hand, have a bunch of scum among their midst. They'll even accept bronze "Veteran's Grave Marker Plaques" that have obviously pried out of the rest of the gravestone. Out here most of those "scrappers" have surnames that originated in Korea.

 

[Jhnmdahl]

Here's a double whammy; My x-boss had a metal dock board stolen from his loading dock and we actually heard the "clanging" when the scumbags were loading it up but were too late getting out of the warehouse to catch them. We found it at the salvage yard but because the salvage yard broke no laws it buying it the boss had to pay to get it back. that sucks!!

This is not true. If you can identify/prove it was yours, it still belongs to you and you get it back without having to pay for it again. Salvage yards, pawn shops, etc. know that if they unknowingly receive stolen property they lose it once the owner comes along, so they are usually pretty careful about it.

The basic legal principle is that the thief can't convey rights in the stolen property to the salvage yard greater than his own rights, which in this case are none. The famous law school textbook case illustrating this is "in re Two Bose Speakers", 17 Kan.App.2d 179, which explains that with a few exceptions (such as currency), someone buying stolen property has no greater rights in the property than the thief they buy it from.

John

 

[FortyFive2Life]

correct me if i'm wrong but I believe that even pawn shops are immune to being held culpable when buying stolen stuff because they have no duty to know beforehand that the item is "hot".

I have no first-hand knowledge, but I've heard Rick from Pawn Stars say on his show before that if they buy stolen property, and the police come in to claim it for a victim/investigation, then his business is out the money they handed over for it. So the business isn't liable for buying the stolen goods, but they certainly have to turn it over and don't get to charge for that. I'd contact my local LEO.

 

[Jhnmdahl]

I have no first-hand knowledge, but I've heard Rick from Pawn Stars say on his show before that if they buy stolen property, and the police come in to claim it for a victim/investigation, then his business is out the money they handed over for it. So the business isn't liable for buying the stolen goods, but they certainly have to turn it over and don't get to charge for that. I'd contact my local LEO.

They can go after whoever brought the item in and try to get their money back, but the seller is often nowhere to be found. This is one of the reasons many of pawn shops keep pretty good logs of seller ID and contact information, and require a photo ID from the seller before they buy anything. Even if the seller bought it in good faith from someone else, the pawn shop can recover their money from the seller if they can find them, and leave the seller to go to their source to do the same.

John

 

[2ndamendfan]

I make an occasional run to the scrap yard (about every 2 years or so) and for iron/scrap of $50 they photo copy your DL. Aluminum,brass/copper/ stainless steal (other side of yard) is a finger print and a copy of DL. I asked why years ago (because I don't normally think of stealing, to pay for my ammo habit) and she told me to track thieves.

Thing is the targets would go into the regular iron/scrap pile for about $150 a ton.

 

[majohnson2]

In the Denver area they have even been known to steal the brass shut off valves for irrigation water systems. The bigger issue here I worry is that at some point BLM and other agencies are no longer going to able to justify with replacing the steel. And use shooters are going to be left in the wind with nothing.

 

[orkan]

The way things are going... the feds are probably the ones stealing it!

 

[lash]

This is not true. If you can identify/prove it was yours, it still belongs to you and you get it back without having to pay for it again. Salvage yards, pawn shops, etc. know that if they unknowingly receive stolen property they lose it once the owner comes along, so they are usually pretty careful about it.

The basic legal principle is that the thief can't convey rights in the stolen property to the salvage yard greater than his own rights, which in this case are none. The famous law school textbook case illustrating this is "in re Two Bose Speakers", 17 Kan.App.2d 179, which explains that with a few exceptions (such as currency), someone buying stolen property has no greater rights in the property than the thief they buy it from.

John

You will be wrong in that statement if you are in Florida. That may be true in some states, but here in Florida, a couple years ago, the pawn shops and scrap dealers were successful in getting the law changed. Even if you are the rightful owner and it can be proven and even if the police arrest the perp and the shop/yard knows about it, the "rightful" owner has to pay the shop/yard what they paid for the goods in order to get it back.

My company just went through that last year when we worked with a detective to catch a couple guys who were stealing our scrap steel from our steel dumpster and selling it down the street to a scrap yard. We got them and their vehicle on video and and the scrap yard cooperated with police to identify and catch the thief. Then the scrap yard called us and offered to sell us our scrap steel back to us for what they paid. This made me very upset and I discussed it with the detective in charge of the investigation. He showed me the statute change. That is how I know.

Your state laws may vary from this, but don't assume that just because something seems unreasonable and unfair, that it isn't so.

 

[BigJimFish]

You will be wrong in that statement if you are in Florida. That may be true in some states, but here in Florida, a couple years ago, the pawn shops and scrap dealers were successful in getting the law changed. Even if you are the rightful owner and it can be proven and even if the police arrest the perp and the shop/yard knows about it, the "rightful" owner has to pay the shop/yard what they paid for the goods in order to get it back.

My company just went through that last year when we worked with a detective to catch a couple guys who were stealing our scrap steel from our steel dumpster and selling it down the street to a scrap yard. We got them and their vehicle on video and and the scrap yard cooperated with police to identify and catch the thief. Then the scrap yard called us and offered to sell us our scrap steel back to us for what they paid. This made me very upset and I discussed it with the detective in charge of the investigation. He showed me the statute change. That is how I know.

Your state laws may vary from this, but don't assume that just because something seems unreasonable and unfair, that it isn't so.

Florida, where possession is 10/10ths of the law and people can't figure out how to punch a hole in a ballot. Why am I not surprised that a law like this would exist in Florida.

So, if you steal it back from the scrap yard it's legally yours again right?

 

[lash]

Being from Florida, I'd love to argue that point with you [MENTION=55505]BigJimFish[/MENTION], but you may be right. There's a saying,"the law is an ass", that has a certain accuracy down here.

 

[opeagle]

And the reason we have all those cruisers is that we have Ohio State Highway Patrol, not State Police like many other states. Not saying it's good or bad, it just is.

Our club lost several hundred pounds of targets a few years ago. Around here the storm water grates have a habit of disappearing as well. Disturbing.

 

[40xs]

Obviously, the law differs from state to state.

 

[tnichols]

You guys have any ideas on how to mark your steel to verify ownership in the off chance it would be recovered? I leave my steel "out" quite a bit and would rather not weld my initials into it. I'm no steel expert, but know that AR500 is harder than the hubs of hell. Could a guy mark it on the back side with a center punch? Initials, phone number, etc... Don't know which would win, the steel or the tool. I'm open to ideas.

 

[Crazy1323]

You could always acid etch it.

You guys have any ideas on how to mark your steel to verify ownership in the off chance it would be recovered? I leave my steel "out" quite a bit and would rather not weld my initials into it. I'm no steel expert, but know that AR500 is harder than the hubs of hell. Could a guy mark it on the back side with a center punch? Initials, phone number, etc... Don't know which would win, the steel or the tool. I'm open to ideas.

 

[HOGWILD]

Our range hangs steel from cross ties and have had to ban 50 Cal rifles on those ranges due to them shooting the cross ties! Our range is out on a Mesa and is a private range but why they shoot the cross ties is still unknown? Replacing the cross ties is making range officials very unhappy and they need their range cards pulled when caught! Being out on a Mesa in the middle of no where does not help but I guess they could be stealing the gongs as well? Good luck finding the worthless crack heads stealing your gongs! With a little effort maybe you will find them! Set some more gongs out and set up some trail cams or set in wait for them, I will set with ya but I will need to bring my LMT 556 and a thousand rounds

 

[majohnson2]

With things warming up, please keep an eye out for these on the odd chance they didn't end up at the recycler. There are not many organizations out there that want to do anything for the gun owner, short of relieving them of their guns, lets support the folks at the BLM.

 

[Altnews]

That's wrong. It's stolen property and it remains the property of the original owner no matter what. That's why pawn shops have to fill out police paperwork in many places. If you find something that belongs to you, and you can prove it, you have every right to take it back, and have the police arrest the scrap dealer for trafficking in stolen goods to boot. When I took a bunch of scrap to the yard a couple of months ago I had to present my ID, which was photocopied, and I had to stand in a painted box on the floor next to the scale that had my scrap on it while they took a digital picture of me and the scrap. Scrap dealers who don't check ID and get an affidavit deserve to be jailed and put out of business because THEY are the ones who are creating the demand for stolen metal.

 

[Altnews]

In the Denver area they have even been known to steal the brass shut off valves for irrigation water systems. The bigger issue here I worry is that at some point BLM and other agencies are no longer going to able to justify with replacing the steel. And use shooters are going to be left in the wind with nothing.

My favorite BLM target is available in endless quantity: Rocks!

 

[Altnews]

You guys have any ideas on how to mark your steel to verify ownership in the off chance it would be recovered? I leave my steel "out" quite a bit and would rather not weld my initials into it. I'm no steel expert, but know that AR500 is harder than the hubs of hell. Could a guy mark it on the back side with a center punch? Initials, phone number, etc... Don't know which would win, the steel or the tool. I'm open to ideas.

Get a stamp with a custom cartouche made, very small, and stamp all six faces in a standard place, including the edges. Better chance it won't be found and ground out. Problem is, once it gets to the scrap yard it's going to be buried under 20 tons of other stolen scrap before the thief leaves the lot.

A few claymore mines wired to the steel might have positive results...

Or, just resign yourself to picking up your steel. I bought some nice automatic-reset targets at Knob Creek last year. Pain in the ass to carry around but I'm thinking of building an off-road cart so I can haul them behind an ATV. Right now I have a Polaris six by six with the cargo bed, which works great.