🔍 The Copper Finds the Copper 🔍

🔍 The Copper Finds the Copper 🔍

📣 Wantage & Grove NHPT 📣

We recently put up a post reminding youngsters to stay out of an abandoned building. Some agreed, some suggested we were being killjoys and stopping kids from being kids.

The thing is, we don't always tell you everything we know. Partly because some information is on a need-to-know basis, and partly because sometimes there's an ongoing investigation.

This was one of those times.

We'd received reports that youths were going into the building and ripping out electrical cable to steal the copper. Now, I have to admit, I was impressed they knew copper prices were worth looking at. Unfortunately, the business plan had a slight flaw...

The building may be abandoned, but it's still connected to the mains electricity supply. The cables were live.

So whilst "The Apprentice: Scrap Metal Edition" might have sounded like a good idea, there was a very real risk of someone receiving a shocking performance review. ⚡

Following enquiries, we identified one of the youths involved. Officers popped round for a chat, made an arrest, and during a search found a nice collection of copper cable, all neatly gathered together and ready for sale.

It turns out that when you're stealing copper, the last person you want turning up is... the Copper. 🚔

The young male has now been referred to the Youth Justice Unit.

So next time we ask people to stay out of a location, please remember there's usually more to the story than we're able to tell.
Sometimes we're not being killjoys... we're just trying to stop someone becoming a human lightbulb.