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Internet out? It might not be the weather. Copper thieves disrupting Dallas neighborhoods

Overhead wires being cut have led to outages around Dallas

It doesn’t take a lot of guesswork for Daniel Jackson to figure out why his internet periodically goes out, and the weather has little to do with it.

He’s caught someone at least twice in the alley behind his Glen Oaks neighborhood home standing on a pickup truck and using a pole saw to cut down overhead wire lines. When police arrive hours later, the damage is done, and he and his neighbors brace themselves for outages that last days — sometimes weeks.

“It’s more than just internet because we have neighbors still on landline phones,” said Jackson, 34, who mostly works from home. “Your whole day is affected because one person wanted to be selfish, knock out half of a subdivision because they wanted to steal copper out of the lines for a quick few $100.”

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Copper wire theft has been a growing issue in recent years in Dallas and around the nation, sparked by surging copper prices. The wiring is found in various public and private infrastructure, such as street lights, heating and air conditioning systems, and utility lines.

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Cutting the overhead lines often takes out essential services that residents need in an emergency and has led utility companies and local elected officials to push for Texas lawmakers next year to pass stiffer penalties for copper thefts from the utility lines.

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The Dallas City Council in October agreed for the city to support any state law change focused on reducing the theft of copper, fiber and other equipment from communication facilities. State law says the theft of property valued less than $20,000 and made of copper is a state jail felony, typically punished with a sentence of 180 days to 2 years in jail and a fine up to $10,000.

Knowingly buying stolen regulated material like copper in Texas is a Class A misdemeanor and selling the stolen material is a state jail felony.

It is also a Class A misdemeanor for anyone to intentionally give false information to a metal recycling business and doing so can lead to up to one year in jail and a fine up to $4,000.

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Dallas council member Carolyn King Arnold said her office has fielded dozens of complaints from residents in her South Oak Cliff district about the issue. They include concerns from people disrupted while working from home and residents reporting impacts to their emergency medical alert devices.

“It’s a public safety issue in so many ways, for constituents and the folks who have no business messing with those lines,” Arnold said. “And the thefts are getting more and more brazen because you’ll have people cutting lines early in the morning, in broad daylight, and any day ending with ‘Y.’ ”

AT&T announced in October it would offer up to $10,000 for tips that lead to the arrest and conviction of people who steal, buy or sell stolen copper cable in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. The reward is valid for anonymous tips received by Nov. 1, 2025, to police or AT&T’s global security and investigations division at 800-807-4205. A similar reward has been offered by AT&T related to thefts in Austin.

AT&T cited copper thefts as the reason South Dallas residents and businesses were without phone and internet services for up to two weeks from Christmas in 2023 and into the new year. Fort Worth Police in October released video seeking help finding two people accused of using a chain attached to their truck bumper to pull down a section of wire that led to a transformer explosion. Several homes lost power. Then, police said they cut and hauled away the downed wire the next day.

“Theft and vandalism of critical communication infrastructure, like AT&T’s, are serious matters that disrupt and impact public safety, emergency services, businesses and the community at large,” said Leslie Ward, president of AT&T Texas.

The Dallas-based telecommunications company has averaged nearly 20 incidents a week in Texas related to copper thefts this year, she said, and seen a more than 60% increase in the metal swipes from their lines from 2022 to 2024.

“For AT&T, Texas is second only to California in estimated dollar loss due to copper theft,” Ward said. The company wouldn’t release any data related to copper wire thefts when asked by The Dallas Morning News.

But not all wires cut down have copper in them. Michael Matson, Spectrum’s regional vice president of field operations for Texas and Louisiana, said his company uses fiber optic lines with none of that type of metal.

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“We’re collateral damage,” he said. “They just see a black cable on a pole, and they’re going out and cutting lines and hoping they find copper when they cut it.”

He declined to elaborate on specific data Spectrum has on cut lines other than saying, “It’s been a pretty significant number of impacts this year.”

Dallas police Officer Michael Dennis said the department doesn’t keep records solely on thefts of copper and didn’t have any information readily available on the number of thefts of metals in Dallas.

“There are a number of reasons metal is stolen; one is so it can be resold to scrap yards for cash,” he said. “This is not only a Dallas issue, but an issue across the country.”

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According to Money Metals Exchange, copper was worth around $2.50 a pound in March 2020 before the COVID-19 pandemic hit. It dropped to as low as $2.07 a pound later that month. But the worth steadily rose throughout 2020, hitting around $3.50 a pound in January 2021, about $4.40 a pound at the same time the next year, dropping to around $3.70 a pound in January 2023 and hitting almost $3.90 a pound in January 2024. Costs spiked to $5.10 a pound in May and have been above $4 a pound throughout November.

“The copper market doesn’t follow the market trends of other metals, so it’s hard to say why costs rise and fall,” said Robert Swift from McMurray Metals Company, a metal distributor in Deep Ellum. “But traditionally, when copper prices go up, the market goes up and the thefts go up also around the same time.”

Swift said McMurray Metals doesn’t buy copper wires.

Meanwhile, resident Jack Dieckhoner hopes his Oak Cliff neighborhood isn’t hit by copper thieves again. He said he’s had six outages this year attributed by AT&T to wires being cut. The outages last days at a time. Among the impacts for his family is their alarm system not working due to the outages.

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“It’s only a matter of time before something tragic happens unless things change,” said Dieckhoner, 67. “It really does feel like a matter of when, not if.”