Star Tribune
Officials seek solutions as copper thieves plunge parts of St. Paul into darkness
Stuart Maxwell was outside one late night three years ago, enjoying a cigar in his Como Park neighborhood, when a whirring noise drew his attention to a nearby streetlight. He saw men spooling wire that connected several lights together.
Maxwell immediately called police and watched as officers took five men into custody. Little did he know, but the crime he witnessed would be repeated over and over this year. Copper thieves have plunged several blocks-long sections of St. Paul — from Como to Phalen and areas in between — into darkness.
“I thought, ‘Hey, that’s our park,'” Maxwell said of the five men he watched. “Sadly, it’s not new. But it’s more common now.”
The problem has proved vexing, as thieves return to pull new wires almost as soon as city work crews bring the street lights back online. Officials from Public Works to Parks and Recreation, from the police department to City Hall, say they are struggling to find a way to keep the lights on.
“They’re doing permanent damage. It’s a safety issue,” said Public Works Director Sean Kershaw, who estimates St. Paul has spent $750,000 to repair damaged streetlights this year alone. “In some places, there is simply nothing we can do.”
Crews are taking a variety of steps to make it more difficult to get at a streetlight’s copper wiring, Kershaw said. In some cases, they are using epoxy or metal bands to better seal access panels. The city has ordered 90 new lights with access panels 10 feet off the ground to replace the lights that have been hit the most.
But unless and until something is done to dampen the market for copper, city officials say, the thefts are likely to continue. In much the same way it took federal and state action to slow catalytic converter thefts, officials say they cannot fight wire theft by themselves.
“It’s like whack-a-mole,” said City Council President Amy Brendmoen, who represents Como Park.
Brendmoen, who walks around Como Lake every morning, said the growing darkness caused by wire theft “is a big problem, and it’s getting worse.” And it’s happening in cities across the country, she said.
“I do think at the end of the day, we’re going to need some help from the feds like we did with catalytic converters,” she said. “We need to look to scrap yards to see what they are accepting, maybe consider rules about how payments are made.”
Last year, Brendmoen said, the City Council appropriated $500,000 to replace damaged light poles and $300,000 to use on techniques to thwart thieves. Ideas include using aluminum wire, or perhaps solar streetlights. One constituent suggested putting snakes inside the light poles, she said.
“It’s a little too cold here for that,” she chuckled.
Kamal Baker, a spokesman for Mayor Melvin Carter, agreed that any strategy to address wire theft needs to be multi-pronged.
“We’re working on local solutions to prevent copper wire theft by dis-incentivizing the purchase of stolen wire, but this issue isn’t unique to St. Paul,” Baker wrote in an email. “There’s a conversation to be had at the Capitol — no neighborhood in Minnesota should be completely dark when the sun goes down.”
Andy Rodriguez, St. Paul’s Parks and Recreation director, said that parks darkened by wire theft pose a public safety risk for joggers, walkers and cyclists forced to use dark trails at their own risk. He agreed with Brendmoen that the problem is bigger than what St. Paul can fix on its own.
“An uptick in wire theft over the last several years has caused adverse effects on the park user experience, both in St. Paul and across the nation,” Rodriguez said in an e-mail. “While we continue to work as quickly as possible to address significant impact locations head-on, especially within regional parks across the city, a longer-term solution is needed to fully solve the issue and ensure the safety and enjoyment of our spaces as intended.”
St. Paul Police spokesman Sgt. Mike Ernster said that by the time residents call police, whole blocks have gone dark. He encouraged residents to call police if they see anyone who appears to be working on a streetlight, especially after dark and without a city vehicle nearby.
Maxwell said he doesn’t feel uncomfortable walking unlit areas of Como after dark. But the father of four said he understands why the park’s many runners, walkers, sports teams and festival-goers make getting the lights back on a necessity.
“You realize the importance of them being able to see,” he said.
Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan and her daughter were among the throngs Friday as President Joe Biden delivered the apology that many Indigenous Americans thought would never come.
“I think he really said the things that people have been waiting to hear for generations, acknowledged just the horror and trauma of literally having our children stolen from our communities,” said Flanagan, a member of the White Earth Band of Ojibwe. “It’s a powerful first step towards healing.”
Hundreds of boarding schools operated in the 19th and 20th centuries, separating Indigenous children from their families and forcing them to assimilate to European ways. Many children were abused, and at least 973 died, according to a report from the U.S. Department of the Interior.
Other Minnesotans reacted similarly to Flanagan, saying they welcomed the apology but that additional action is needed to help Indigenous people move forward.
Anton Treuer, a professor of Ojibwe at Bemidji State University, wrote in a newsletter that the apology was “a welcome first step on the journey to healing.”
“There is no way to truly right historical injustices for the children buried at Carlisle, Haskell, and other schools, but these words set a new tone for the country and will help heal the anguish so many Natives have carried for so long,” Treuer wrote. “It gives me hope that we can come together to reconcile and heal our troubled nation.”
Sen. Mary Kunesh, DFL-New Brighton, the first Indigenous woman to serve in the state Senate, called Biden’s apology encouraging.
“This recognition of past wrongdoings is an important step towards healing relationships between the United States and the sovereign nations affected by these past systems,” Kunesh said in a statement. “This dark period of American history must be remembered and taught.”
“I have done everything in my power to remedy this situation, and it continues to get more and more violent by the day,” Moturi wrote. “There have been numerous times when I’ve seen Sawchak outside and contacted law enforcement, and there was no response. I am not confident in the pursuit of Sawchak given that Sawchak attacked me, MPD officers had John detained, and despite an HRO and multiple warrants — they still let him go.”
On Friday, five City Council members sent a letter to Mayor Jacob Frey and Police Chief Brian O’Hara expressing their “utter horror at MPD’s failure to protect a Minneapolis resident from a clear, persistent and amply reported threat posed by his neighbor.”
Council Members Andrea Jenkins, Elliott Payne, Aisha Chughtai, Jason Chavez and Robin Wonsley went on to allege that police had failed to submit reports to the County Attorney’s Office despite threats being made with weapons, and at times while Sawchak screamed racial slurs. Sawchak is white and Moturi is Black.
The council members also contend in their letter that the MPD told the County Attorney’s Office that police did not intend to execute the warrant for “reasons of officer safety.”
At a Friday afternoon news conference at MPD’s Fifth Precinct, O’Hara said police had been working to arrest Sawchak since at least April, but “no Minneapolis police officers have had in-person contact with that suspect since the victim in this case has been calling us.” The chief pointed out that Sawchak is mentally ill, has guns and refuses to cooperate “in the dozens of times that police officers have responded to the residence.”
O’Hara put aside the option to carry out “a high-risk warrant based on these factors [and] the likelihood of an armed, violent confrontation where we may have to use deadly force with the suspect.” The preference, he said, was to arrest Sawchak outside his home, but “in this case, this suspect is a recluse and does not come out of the house.”
ROCHESTER – The Federal Transit Administration has green-lighted an $85 million grant supporting the development of the city’s planned Link Bus Rapid Transit system.
The FTA formally announced the grant on Friday during a ceremonial check presentation outside of the Mayo Civic Center, one of the seven stops planned for the bus line. The federal grant will cover about 60% of the project’s estimated $143.4 million price tag, with the remaining funds coming from Destination Medical Center, the largest public-private development project in state history.
Set to go live in 2026, the 2.8-mile Link system will connect downtown Rochester, including Mayo Clinic’s campuses, with a proposed “transit village” that will include parking, hundreds of housing units and a public plaza. The bus line will be the first of its kind outside the Twin Cities — with service running every five minutes during peak hours.
“That means you may not even need to look at a schedule,” said Veronica Vanterpool, deputy administrator for the FTA. “You can just show up at your transit stop and expect the next bus to come in a short time. That is a game changer and a life-transformational experience in transit for those people who are using it and relying on it.”
The planned Second Street corridor is already one of the busiest roads in Rochester, carrying more than 21,800 vehicles a day, and city planners have talked for years about ways to reduce traffic congestion in the city’s downtown. Local officials estimate that the transit line, which will rely on a fleet of all-electric buses, will handle 11,000 riders on its first day of operation and save eight city blocks of parking.
Speaking to a crowd of about 100 people gathered on Friday, Sen. Amy Klobuchar said the project shows Rochester is thinking strategically about how it handles growth.
“If you just plan the business expansion, and you don’t have the workforce, you don’t have the child care, the housing or the transit, it’s not going to work very well as a lot of communities across the nation have found,” Klobuchar said.
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