Stolen Cannon in MI

[US-Subs]

Told a friend that I would post this for him. Unfortunately it was probably not stolen for its collector value....

http://theswit.com/stolencannon/

[millsbomber]

Lets hope its not in the melting pot, here in the UK the scumbags are stealing the memorial plaques of the soldiers killed and selling them to scrap dealers, its one of the few crimes i agree should have capital punishment ... Dave

[US-Subs]

The biggest ones to blame are the dealers - if there was no market there would be no reason for theft.

[pzgr40]

I work at a shipyard. Last december a ships propeller that had been laying around in storage in the field for years -in plain view- disappeared. To give you an idea; it was 7 meter in diameter and weighed 20 tons. It just vanished in thin air.
In general I do not think -scrap- dealers are to blame, exept for when he can reasonably suspect it is stolen stuff. On the other hand one could make a system where a private person offering metal to a scrap dealer can only do so if his driverslicence or ID card is scanned/copied by the scrapdealer together with a note of what -and how much- has been offered and/or sold. This makes it less attractive for thieves to offer metal to a scrapdealer and the risk of getting caught is bigger.
Here in Holland no bronze statue is safe last years and some town councils have allready descided to take away all statues to a safe storage (even very heavy ones). This led however to trains stranding still in the morning as the thieves had moved on to stealing the copper signalling wires along the rail, which - as people will understand- causes very dangerous situations concerning safety.

[US-Subs]

Cannons, memorial plaques, copper cable - the scrap dealers know as much as they want to know. They do not accept the sellers word that it is copper/bronze etc without inspecting it - they are not novices, they know what they buy. If the thief cannot sell it, they have no reason to steal it.

[wichitaslumlord]

Our city council has passed stiff new regulations concerning the sale of scrap metal. A Federal EPA license is required to sell old refrigeration coils and lines. I recently sold several that I had on hand and the dealer never asked for my license. When I mentioned it, he then became interested and photocopied it for his files.
US-Subs it right, many choose to look the other way and cooperate with the police in a reactive way, not a pro active one. Our new laws have done nothing to stem the tide of stolen metal as the thieves just haul it to the next town or State.

[smle2009]

Perhaps the Spanish stole it back?

[BOUGAINVILLE]

I am quite amazed that the Western World also has this problem. I came across this phenomena on our last visit to Bougainville 2 years ago. Climbed up to the top of Pok Pok Island in the middle of Kieta Harbour and couldn't locate the bronze survey marker left by the USN back in the 1950's. Latter found out that some lads had uprooted it for scrap. The same fate has meet nearly all of the bronze plaques on Japanese monuments commemorating those that lost their lives in WWII. It looks like nothing is safe. These scum need a piece of lead.

I happen to know one of the scrap merchants and also the forklift driver at the other scrap yard. I had a wee yarn to the forklift driver and am quite sure that from that moment on that no brass shells etc would find their way into the scrap heap when he realised that the scrap value was only pittance compared to the collector value.

I gather that in some sections of Port Moresby, PNG, that the telephones are regularly out because some rascal has uplifted the copper cables for scrap.

Heard of one bloke who got fried trying to flog electrical lines for scrap. He found out the hard way that the lines had been energised.

It certainly looks like it is a worldwide problem.

As for the cannon, who in their right mind would scrap and devalue it when it is worth substantially more as a cannon.

It certainly looks as if this world has it's fair share of vermin.