Spokane7
65°
August 25, 2011 in City
Parts of KPBX antenna stolen
Thieves cut up and stole pieces of a radio antenna owned by KPBX Radio sometime between Sunday and Tuesday afternoon, according to the Spokane County Sheriff’s Office.
The antenna was no longer in use and was lying on the ground in a fenced compound on Mica Peak, a news release said.
KPBX General Manager Dick Kunkel said the station hadn’t decided whether to sell the antenna or keep it as backup. He said about 60 feet of coaxial cable was stolen, along with some connectors. Saying the theft is “unfortunate,” Kunkel added that it won’t be a “major hit” financially. “It’s probably worth more to us as a backup,” he said.
Anyone with information on the burglary is asked to call Crime Check at (509) 456-2233.
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The_Seer on August 25 at 12:46 p.m.
freakin’ tweakers….
Spokritic on August 25 at 12:49 p.m.
Gotta be a tea bagger who hates NPR
reservedparking on August 25 at 1:38 p.m.
Doubt it… Copper thievin’ meth heads aren’t the NPR type.
Squid on August 25 at 2:09 p.m.
I have an idea! How about we get the police to actually investigate this? Couldn’t be tough to find parts of an antenna and copper cable in the same load at the recycle yard. There are cameras at most of these sites too. Bet ya that this isn’t the first time these guys have stolen property, so how about we use that third strike thingy? Pretty simple.
How is it possible to scrap 360,000 pounds of stolen aluminum sheet or a stolen antenna without being caught? Are the scrap yards unaware of these items? If so, then the police are to blame for not having a hot sheet. It wouldn’t cost a dime to print out a hot sheet with detailed descriptions and e-mail it to the recycler.
If there is a hot sheet, then maybe it should be a law to possess stolen goods. Oh yeah, it already is.
RedCedar on August 25 at 2:56 p.m.
The thieves are clearly tweeker idiots if only because they stole coax. Even though it looks big and fat, coax is almost entirely plastic. To get anything at all for it, they’ll have to burn it in a trash fire somewhere and sell what little copper is left as #2 scrap. They might even find that it’s semi-rigid coax with an aluminum outside that’s worth basically nothing.
Squid raises the obvious questions about catching the thieves, so I won’t repeat that part.
Byrdie714 on August 25 at 3:13 p.m.
It took KPBX radio two days to notice this????
lowtechmaster on August 25 at 4:03 p.m.
Is it true that the Spokane Police Department does not bother to investigate “crimes against property”???????
Ron_the_Cop on August 25 at 4:30 p.m.
Squid and lowtechmaster,
Yes it’s true that the SPD disbanded its Crimes Against Property Investigation Unit for lack of funding. Go figure what message that’s send to all the meth heads in town.
BTW I do have metal theft experience if anyone’s interested in having me cruise the scrap yards:-)
Ron Wright Investigations LLC (ron [at] ronwrightinvestigations [dot] com
Squid on August 25 at 4:35 p.m.
Ron, do you think it’s a dumb idea to train the street cops to take fingerprints and investigate property crimes, and then have detectives do the rest, rather than having a special unit to do all?
Might be a good compromise and the citizens would be happier.
Wizard_Of_Oz on August 25 at 4:42 p.m.
Too bad that 50,000 watts of power wasn’t being broadcast at the time. We would have ourselves a little barbecue….
Hope they took castings of the tire tracks…
Damn that tower would have made a great place to hold a couple of necktie parties….
D Statler on August 25 at 4:57 p.m.
I would have loved to hang some long wires off that tower. LOL The property crimes unit is gone.Patrol cops are nearly gone. Where are all our tax dollars actually going? Must be alot of overhead in the police buisness. I guess they only show up when the show COPS is in town filming ! A tower should be very easy to spot at the scrap yard.KPBX better hire Ron or send their own out looking.