A friend called today to report that he had been "hit."  He arrived at his Bridgehampton home to find that the copper downspouts on his house were gone.  He knew that our copper downspouts had been stolen this winter.

Back in late March, we had returned from a ski vacation, and pulling into the driveway during a rainstorm, noticed water cascading from the roof line. Assuming the downspout had blown off in high winds, we circled the house, looking in the bushes, for the heavy copper pipe. All of the downspouts were missing; obviously theft. The downspouts were a quick hit—the gutters are tightly bolted in with numerous screws, the downspouts just hang from the gutter. The Southampton Town Police duty officer told us that there was a swell in copper theft due to soaring prices. She told us to check our basement because thieves were breaking in to steal copper pipes.  A quick Google search produced numerous articles on recent attempts by municipalities to limit theft by controlling scrap sales.

A nice officer arrived to write the Grand Larceny report and we made several calls. First to Russell Nill, who had fabricated our copper gutters many years ago. He seems to supply much of the copperwork in the area.  I asked if they knew the frequency with which their product was being pilfered.  They said they were aware of some recent theft, but stated that the last place a thief would bring scrap copper would be to them. A few more calls yielded the information that there were two scrap yards mid-Island/lower Suffolk which were the most-likely destination for our gutters. After an extended conversation with headquarters, the officer told us that there had been numerous copper thefts in East Hampton and that the two departments would be cooperating. 

On April 10th a Page 1 article appeared in the East Hampton Star on the surge in residential copper thefts. An April 24th article, reported that the copper leaders had been stolen from the Bridgehampton home of fashion designer and wobbly cyclist, Isaac Mizrahi.

But it wasn't just copper this winter. We called numerous friends and neighbors to alert them. Water Mill, Bridgehampton, Sag Harbor had all been hit hard in a crime wave and everyone we called knew someone with a break-in story.  There were brazen break-ins of alarm and gate-fortified homes that were planned as "quick hits", tripping the alarm but getting out quickly, flat screen TVs in tow.

We assume that some weekend and summer residents still haven't realized their gutters are missing.  But our friend down the street was definitely hit in the past four days. So gutter theft is not just a winter sport.  The neighborhood has now repopulated but it's tough to catch—snatching downspouts is probably a 90-second crime and we all have a hive of busy service workers in our driveways all week long.  But police presence of two dedicated officers in a 25-square-mile area is not going to deter crime either.

What we need is good detective work. We hope that the Police are staking out these dealers. Our copper downspouts were clearly custom made to fit the angles of our house.  Had police seized or 'registered' items as they came in, custom items could certainly have been traced to victimized homes.

So in the meantime, what's next? A surveillance camera? A lengthy stake out? A gun? We hope someone puts an end to this soon. Any method is fine.