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ST. LOUIS — Thieves were persistent the first week of April as they scavenged for copper in the Skinker-DeBaliviere neighborhood.

They cut overhead telecommunication lines in an alley between McPherson and Kingsbury avenues. Repair crews needed two days to restore internet and Wi-Fi to Katrina Stierholz and her neighbors.

Four hours later, thieves returned to the same alley. They did it again. 

"It is maddening," Stierholz said. "It's worrisome and generally inconvenient. It seemed crazy that people would do this."

The problem is a headache and potentially dangerous for customers who lose phone and internet service, costly for telecom firms and troubling for police, who say they deal with the problem every day. 

Last September, a vandal cut through a barbed wire fence and broke into a work shed in Lemay to cut AT&T copper lines. The man left the copper behind in a bucket, then rode off on his bike before being arrested, police said.

ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ County police Officer Scott Stickman said in court papers that it caused $15,000 to $25,000 in damage and "temporarily took 911 out of service."

Carriers have the ability to reroute calls in these situations, said ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ County police Sgt. Tracy Panus.

CrimeStoppers asked for the public's help finding vandals last summer after a string of incidents damaged fiber optic network from ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ to Caseyville.

According to a telecom industry report released this month, critical communications infrastructure across the country was vandalized at least 5,700 times between June and December. The vandalism disrupted broadband and wireless service for 1.5 million customers and cost the companies millions in repairs, the report said. 

Texas and California combined for more than half of those incidents. Missouri ranked third, with 305 reports of vandalism in that seven-month period. Illinois was seventh. Those numbers are based on an industry survey, and officials concede the actual numbers are likely higher. 

In Jefferson County alone, police saw 91 thefts or vandalism of telecom wires in 2024. So far this year, police have received reports of more than 30 such crimes, mostly involving aerial copper cables from AT&T, said Detective Lt. Mike Merchant of the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office.

"It's been almost daily for the last couple weeks," he said.

The vandalism twice in the ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ alley over a three-day span is not unusual, said Scott Whitener, a director with AT&T's global security and investigations.

"It's rampant across the city and down in Jefferson County, quite frankly, and even over in southern Illinois," he said.

The copper in cables is what the thieves are seeking. If they can sell copper to scrap yards, the going rate now is about $3.50 a pound, said Jefferson County Sheriff's Detective Kane Harris, who devotes almost all of his work hours to investigating telecom vandalism.

Getting to the wires is risky. Some thieves climb ladders to reach the overhead lines roughly 20 feet up. Others hoist pole saws. Some screw 2x4s to telephone poles to create steps to climb up. One man cutting down copper wire used a ladder that toppled, and he broke his ribs in the fall.

Once thieves bring down the heavy cables, they often slice them into pieces, then hide the materials for a day or two to gauge the police response. 

"We're learning and adapting," said Merchant, the Jefferson County lieutenant.

To catch a thief

After cable lines were severed April 9 in rural Jefferson County, detective Harris installed a hidden camera on a walking trail to watch in case the vandals came back.

The camera detected movement on April 11, showing a man in yellow pants trying to steal copper cables. Police were able to catch a two-man team that cut 800 feet of telecommunication wire. The cables were hidden in the woods, court documents said.

The damage for that single vandalism, including replacement costs, was estimated at $5,000, according to court papers. The downed wire, police said, meant immediate outages and could have kept people from calling for emergency services. 

Jefferson County prosecutors charged a homeless man, Joe Barton III, and his friend Troy Richburg of Festus with the theft.

At Charter's ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ corporate office in Town and Country, Harris and Merchant were among law enforcement officers and telecom industry members at a one-day summit April 9 about protecting communications infrastructure. Participants included the Internet & Television Association, the Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association as well as telecom competitors — AT&T, Charter Communications, Comcast, Lumen and Verizon.

Attendees at the telecom summit pushed for stronger laws, stricter scrap metal regulations and increased security measures. Some states have weak laws on telecom vandalism that only pertain to property in fenced-in areas and not aerial lines, said Kuper Jones, senior director of state and external affairs for the Internet & Television Association in Washington, D.C.

Penalties vary across states, Jones said, with some only having misdemeanors or fines. But Missouri, he said, is among states that "take the proper approach" and consider it a felony to deliberately damage telecom infrastructure.

The scrap yards in Missouri are supposed to get ID from anyone selling metal, police said, and the shops are prohibited from buying metal that is identified as belonging to telecommunications or cable providers.

"But they're still buying it," said detective Harris in an interview. Harris said suspects typically strip the thick black sheathing from the copper wires and burn the color coding off smaller wires. Whitener, with AT&T security, said vandals burning the sheathing create huge, petroleum-based plumes of black smoke sometimes seen in the metro area.

Merchant, the lieutenant, wants more compliance checks and heftier fines for scrap yards that violate the law. Merchant said the fight needs to be across jurisdictions.

After the summit at Charter's corporate office concluded, Merchant and Harris returned to the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office and finished getting warrants in the theft case, their second set of charges in a telecom vandalism case in two weeks. A victory for sure, but Merchant said he feels sometimes like it is "a losing battle" when comparing the number of thefts to the number of arrests.

 "It's overwhelming, to say the least," Merchant said. 

Time-consuming repairs

Vandals target overhead lines, underground vaults and equipment boxes; utility poles, electric grids and electric vehicle charging stations are also hit, the industry report said. The vandals might be someone addicted to drugs and looking to make a few hundred bucks off a copper sale. At the summit, one speaker said, the industry is also concerned with coordinated strategic attacks of sabotage that target a certain company.

The networks operate 911 systems and play a role in health care, banking, power supplies, transportation, public utilities and other areas. 

Some notable examples of telecom vandalism include last year's attack in France that hit multiple telecommunications lines as cities hosted events for the Paris Olympics. In 2023, a thief cut five fiber-optic data lines in , knocking out internet and television services to thousands as they prepared to watch the Super Bowl.

Criminals searching for copper often mistakenly cut into fiber optic lines that are worth nothing to them. Telecom firms are installing more and more fiber optic cables, which they say offer faster data transmission. But the black sheathing that protects them looks similar to what wraps the copper lines.

Thieves who cut into fiber optic usually drop it and walk away frustrated, police said. The tattered fiber optic cable left behind requires restoration that is time-consuming.

Fiber optic lines are repaired by splicing the ends back together. That's a tedious repair for a cable that can have, for example, 288 separate strands, said Aaron Detwiler, area vice president for Spectrum’s Missouri-Illinois management area.

"This could take many multiple hours, every single one of these strands has to be spliced individually," Detwiler said.

A four- or six-hour restoration job could take much longer, he said, if the line is underground and access is a challenge or if the weather is extremely cold and a technician is wearing gloves. The cable could be cut on both ends too. Spectrum is offering up to a $25,000 for information that leads to the arrest of anyone who vandalizes its infrastructure. 

Detwiler said Spectrum worked with a homeowners association in High Ridge that had repeated service outages. Detwiler said that a vandal had struck three or four times there.

"A lot of people, when they're down in service, they're just frustrated," he said.

Brian Scheman was the High Ridge man who got Spectrum's attention after writing letters of complaint to at least eight company executives. Scheman, in the Paradise Valley subdivision, works in sales from home and said internet is crucial to his work, particularly so he can conduct Zoom calls.

"It was going out regularly," Scheman said.

For a time, Scheman even paid for a second internet provider so he could have a backup.

Detwiler came to Scheman's home and described the issue of thieves looking for copper. He talked about what goes into restoring internet service when fiber optic cables are vandalized. Scheman said he is grateful for the explanation.

"There were spots where people were climbing telephone poles — they were that desperate to get copper," Scheman said. "It makes more sense now. I see the issue."