Word: birmingham
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...Earl Dudley Associates in Birmingham, Ala., 10 fans do little to tame the 97-degree heat. Last weekend, four of the surveyor supply company's air conditioning units were mined for their copper coils. Six other businesses on their block languish with open doors, waiting for their air conditioner replacements. "I'd just like five minutes alone with the guys who did it," says sales manager Mike Smith, as he wiped sweat from his brow...
...just ACs that are the targets of the metal thieves. Plumbing pipes, electrical wires, mail boxes and even copper urns decorating graves are all fair game. Even the Alabama Environmental Council's recycling center in downtown Birmingham was a victim of a recycling crime. The center's lone bathroom was stripped of copper pipe, spewing gallons of water out during drought restrictions on water usage. Fortunately, a homeless man cut off the water. Still, the $12 worth of copper mined from the sink cost the small non-profit $800 in repairs...
...most vulnerable seem to be new properties. Thirty half-built homes in a new development bordering the Renaissance Ross Bridge Golf Resort in Birmingham have lost copper plumbing pipes. Thieves are snatching metals in daylight on job sites. "We put it in on Monday and had to replace it by Wednesday," said Matthew Graves, production manager for Mainline Heating & Air Conditioning in Birmingham...
...acts is not easy. One problem is the inability to track copper parts and tie them to an offense. Hernandez recommends spray painting or etching copper pipes for identity purposes. Meanwhile, companies like American Scrap Metal in Dallas check photo IDs and turn away scrap that looks too new. Birmingham's Standard Heating & Air Conditioning Co. and Dalco are even starting to attach alarms to AC units. That may sound drastic, until you realize that in the South air conditioners are a life or death issue. "Without air conditioning, nobody would live in this hell hole," said Points...
CONVICTED. Richard Scrushy, 53, founder of HealthSouth, based in Birmingham, Ala., and Don Siegelman, 60, former Democratic Governor of Alabama; of bribery and mail fraud for a scheme in which Scrushy gave $500,000 to Siegelman's campaign for a state lottery in exchange for a seat on a state board that regulated HealthSouth; by a federal jury; in Montgomery, Ala. The verdicts came one year after Scrushy, who still faces several civil trials, was acquitted of a $2.7 billion accounting fraud at HealthSouth...