Copper thief hitting APS service yard

ALBUQUERQUE (KRQE) - A guy with a habit of stealing copper wire and tubing from the Albuquerque School District got away again Thursday, but not before an APS employee confronted him and logged details of his truck.

For the last three weeks the thief has targeted the APS Maintenance and Operations lot near Milne Stadium just east of Interstate 25 and south of Coal Avenue.

"It's sad," APS Maintenance Director John Dufay said. "It's taxpayers' money. Instead of doing the job you need to being doing, we have people having to watch for theft during the day."

This bad guy knows metal dealers are paying top dollar for copper these days so he grabs wire and tubing used for all types of work and repairs at district buildings.

What this crook likely didn't know, though, is that he's been caught on surveillance cameras several times.

The latest theft happened shortly after 4 p.m. Thursday when the thief pulled his white Mazda pickup truck into the yard, backed up to an electrician's truck and helped himself to a large spool of wire from its bed.

A dispatcher saw the theft, approached the guy and wrote down distinctive details about the truck.

It's a Mazda Special Edition with a broken left tail light and a paper license plate taped to the left corner of the tailgate.

The district is working with metro recycling businesses to see if the crook tries to sell the stolen wire to them.

After the last session of the Legislature Gov. Susana Martinez signed into law a bill requiring scrap-metal dealers to keep sales records and make them available to police who are investigating metal thefts.