Copper wire thieves are targeting parks and athletic fields across Philadelphia, knocking out lighting and disrupting youth sports and recreation programs.<\/p>\n
On Friday night, city leaders were expected to announce new measures aimed at deterring the thefts and protecting public spaces.<\/p>\n
The city says a series of copper wire thefts has hit locations across Philadelphia, including Bartram’s Garden, Houseman Recreation Center and Hunting Park.<\/p>\n
At Hunting Park, lights were recently replaced after copper wiring was stolen.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s for the kids, it\u2019s a football field they play out here and they need the lights,\u201d Hunting Park neighbor Gene Scott said.<\/p>\n
The thefts have knocked out lighting, disrupted youth sports and recreation, and raised safety concerns for people who use the affected spaces.<\/p>\n
Scott said it is frustrating to see infrastructure intended for the community targeted by thieves.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt takes a whole lot of copper to make any kind of money, it\u2019s pretty useless really but I guess they didn\u2019t think so\u2026 It\u2019s a bad idea,\u201d Scott said.<\/p>\n
According to COMEX, copper is trading at about $6.55 a pound, and stolen copper can be sold for cash.<\/p>\n
Multiple city agencies are now laying out new measures aimed at deterring theft and protecting parks and athletic fields. Those measures are expected to be shared at the news conference set for 6:30 p.m. Friday.<\/p>\n
This story was originally reported for broadcast by NBC Philadelphia. AI tools helped convert the story to a digital article, and an NBC Philadelphia journalist edited the article for publication.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Copper wire thieves are targeting parks and athletic fields across Philadelphia, knocking out lighting and disrupting youth sports…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":298645,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[69,71,70],"class_list":["post-298644","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia-headlines","tag-philadelphia-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298644","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=298644"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298644\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/298645"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=298644"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=298644"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=298644"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}