This may happen in your town soon:
Taken from the 7/1/2013 San Francisco Chronicle:
New S.F. permit law may foil scrap-metal thieves
Frustrated by crooks who rip copper from cars, homes and anywhere else they can find it, San Francisco on Monday will enact a law requiring anyone who sells scrap metal to one of the city's four junk recyclers to hold a special permit.
The goal is to attack the market for copper theft, which has plagued transit agencies, utility companies, cemeteries and other businesses. While the permits will be good for two years, they will be mostly off limits to people with a history of theft or burglary.
"For the ones that are legit about it, it won't be that big a deal," said police Officer Sue Lavin, who leads the city's enforcement efforts against recyclers. "Most of the metal thieves have a criminal record."
But at one of the city's recycling yards, officials predicted that the law and the $768 permit fee would only drive metal sellers - including many lawful ones - to junk dealers just outside the city. They predicted a 30 percent plunge in business.
"The problem with this new legislation is it's singling out San Francisco," said Nick Circosta, the chief financial officer at Circosta Iron and Metal Co. in Bayview-Hunters Point. "All of our customers who aren't willing to buy the permit can drive to South San Francisco or Oakland, or our competition can move to Brisbane and start buying all the metal."
Circosta said the four San Francisco recyclers would pay dearly for the city's desire to be a pioneer in stopping copper theft. Statewide laws, he said, would keep the playing field level among recyclers.
"We've had these guys for 15, 20 years," he said of customers. "It's all based on loyalty."
Under the new legislation - authored by Supervisor Malia Cohen, whose district includes Bayview-Hunters Point - metal sellers must apply for a permit with the Police Department and submit to a background check.
Licensed contractors, who often must discard scrap metal, are exempt. Applicants with past convictions for burglary or theft can seek a hearing to try to get a permit.
Police are allowing sellers a 90-day grace period to get a permit, Lavin said, but must show as of Monday that they have at least applied.
Recyclers noted that state law already requires them to keep records of sales, including photographs of sellers, their driver's licenses, their license plates and the goods they bring in. But Cohen said San Francisco was setting an example by going further.
"This is a public safety issue," Cohen said. "Cars were getting broken into, fixtures are getting stolen. It would be negligent of us to turn a blind eye to it."
A spokesman for Pacific Gas & Electric Co., which says it has lost at least $5.2 million due to metal theft over the past seven years, said the ban will help fix a metal recycling industry with "very little oversight."
"Sue (Lavin) has done a great job in combatting this," said the spokesman, Joe Molica. "This gives the Police Department a lot more teeth in the permit process and who ultimately gets to buy and sell."
Update:
The permit is actually $824 and it's good for two years. You have to go to the police station to get a permit application, and half of the cops in the station don't know anything about this.
Scrap yards that buy from new sellers (even if the seller has this new valid permit) can be charged a fee of $136, which the yards are passing this charge down to the seller. In other worlds, a seller sells to a new yard, and the seller takes a hit of $136 for doing business with this yard for the first time.
The ordinance states that no one can buy metal unless the seller has this seller's permit. In other words, you haul scrap out of someone's place and you're not allowed to pay them for any kind of metal value at all (this actually may work out for the better).
This hasn't prevented any theft; it'll probably start more of it. It just started a new black market. People with permits are buy from non-permitted sellers for way below market rate. People are cruising places where the homeless gather and buy copper for next to nothing.
I've been hoarding about 1,000 lbs. of copper so far and it make more sense to take it to a yard in the next city.
