It seems that if you ask anyone involved in running any sort of building these days they have had some sort of metal theft incident in recent months, yet it is a crime that seems not to be taken seriously by the police.
In a nearly village to me I know that the Church Hall, the Village Hall, the Social Club, The Primary School and another sports club have all had lead taken from their roofs in recent months, yet none of this has seemingly led to any great activity from the police. But this is a crime with consequences. At my own school a large amount of lead has been taken from the roof in the last fortnight and with all the rain that fell during the half term it means that the roof has collapsed in one room (luckily just before school started) and two other classrooms have had to have emergency work done to them to ensure that the rain damage does not also lead to a roof collapse. Would the police have taken more interest in this if someone had been hurt ?
My school is not alone in having had to close classrooms. Other Norwich schools have had similar problems too, but the metal thieves seem to act with blatant impunity.
The odd thing about this is that lead is not something that is bought and sold by just any old person on the street. Lead can be easily sold, but to scrap metal merchants, and these are not exactly on every street corner. Someone told me that there are only a few scrap metal dealers in Norfolk. How much man power would it take to check out which vehicles visit these dealers on a weekly basis ?
It seems to me that stealing lead, copper and other metals is the country's favourite crime. But with next to no convictions for it, you can see why.
No comments:
Post a Comment