Grates and signs stolen in NJ

I'm an editor of a series of NJ newspapers. Here's part of a story that goes out tomorrow in one of my publications:

Thieves’ Street Theft
Even Grabs Grates
In Little Egg Harbor


Sure, times are tough and everyone is scrambling to make a buck, but scrap metal thieves stealing stormwater grates and street signs in Little Egg Harbor really take the cake, said township Committeeman Ed Nuttall. “Not only is it costing the taxpayers money to replace them but in the case of stormwater grates that they have taken out of the streets, it leaves an 8-foot hole, and that can be very dangerous.”
During the Jan. 12 municipal meeting, Nuttall asked citizens to keep a close lookout and if they see anything suspicious to jot down the license plate number of the culprits and call the police department. “Don’t do anything risky, but we would like to reduce these losses.”
Nuttall said he thought the number of missing grates was perhaps four. In a couple of places, the thieves had put a stolen traffic cone near the hole they created.
Hopefully they won’t steal the concrete out of the new sidewalks that are planned for Frog Pond Road. Township Engineer Jim Oris said there was only one resident at the second public hearing on the project, held earlier that night. The sidewalk project is funded through a $300,000 Department of Transportation Safeways to School grant and will be built between the Frog Pond Elementary School and the George J. Mitchell School. ...

— Pat Johnson, The Sandpaper

thanks for sharing tigerbeetle. I hope the yards were notified to be on the lookout...they are probably too stupid to cut them up.

I'm in jersey to.central jersey it's sad this times are hard

Some guys around here were steeling the grates as well ,they wore orange vests and put up baracades around the hole as they took them. They got caught.

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Hopefully they won’t steal the concrete out of the new sidewalks that are planned for Frog Pond Road.

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Duh. You can't scrap concrete. :rolleyes:

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Originally Posted by Ditchdigger

Duh. You can't scrap concrete. :rolleyes:

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But if your desperate you could smash it up and recover any rebar that might be in it!

I don't know about some places, but I would like to think that most yards would "notice" something like this. Personally, even if I were a theif, I don't think I could work up the courage to take something so obvious. But then again, that's why there's a tv series on people such as this. Officer: where did you get this manhole cover that's printed St. Louis, Mo? Suspect: It's my surname. An old family heirloom.