Businesses spending thousands to deter would-be copper thieves

How are businesses protecting themselves from copper thefts? CTV’s Ashley Bacon finds out.

As copper thieves continue to target businesses throughout Waterloo Region, some business owners are coughing up thousands of dollars to try to protect their properties.

It’s a problem that’s plaguing the entire province, but recently, Bell, the parent company of CTV News, named Cambridge as a hotbed for the crime.

By August of this year, at least 500 copper theft cases involving Bell wires had been reported. Of those cases, 63 per cent were in Ontario; 75 incidents were reported in Cambridge alone.

On Thursday, the Waterloo Regional Police Service (WRPS) announced they were investigating two ‘significant thefts’ of copper and aluminum from HVAC units in Kitchener. One incident happened during the early morning hours of Nov. 18. Investigators said someone climbed onto the roof of a building on Connaught Street, dismantled six air conditioning units and stripped them of their copper.

On Nov. 24, HVAC units at a commercial building in the Riverbend Drive and Lancaster Street West area were targeted.

In both cases, the damage is considered to be extremely costly.

WRPS said at least 64 cases involving more than $5,000 in damage have been reported so far this year. There have been another 166 cases where the damage total is less than $5,000.

“What we’re starting to see now is an increase in commercial damage and wire thefts being from those properties,” WRPS Constable Chris Iden said.

Preventative measures

Some business owners say they are taking steps to shore up their buildings.

“They’ll take anything that’s worth something,” Michael Polzl, from property management company PrimusPM, said. “That would be the copper coils, the condenser coils. That would be any other wiring that has value. They take the units apart on the rooftop - heating and ventilation, air conditioning units - and then they make off with the parts, and they sell that.”

Polzl’s company manages buildings throughout Waterloo Region, including a location in Cambridge that was recently targeted by thieves. He shared video of the incident with CTV News Kitchener.

He said each theft can cost business owners tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars.

“The magnitude we’re talking about is there may be $20, $30, $100 worth of metals that come out of these [thefts] when they’re sold at the scrap dealer,” Polzl explained. “The results would be to the point where we are, if we have to replace a unit, spending $40,000 to $50,000, not including install [costs] to replace the unit. It’s a very disproportionate problem.”

Polzl is not the only business owner taking action.

Over in Guelph, O’Briens Fabrications Ltd., a custom metal fabrications company, is getting requests from clients trying to stop people from accessing rooftop equipment.

“Shrouds cover those gas lines so nobody can scale up those physically,” Matt Wickie, general manager at O’Briens Fabrications Ltd., said. “Then we’re coming up with a prototype for the access ladders where it’s simple – we make it in the shop and come to the site and revamp your access ladder with locks and bards and stuff.”

It’s the solution PrimusPM is going with. Covers have been added to exterior walls on one of their buildings in Kitchener.

“We removed anything that allowed someone to get onto our roof easily,” Polzl said. “Whether that’s removing exterior ladders and internalizing them or covering gas lines. Gas lines are easily scaled. We’ve gone around and we’ve introduced all these types of measures at the expense to prevent that.”

Polzl said property owners and tenants can sometimes share that cost.

“It becomes a very large dollar amount that’s unfortunately burdened by everyone.”