ST PAUL, Minn. — In front of a packed room of St. Paul residents, city and county officials came together to discuss an annoying and costly problem – copper wire thefts.

“Anybody else in here pissed off?” St. Paul Police Chief Axel Henry said, as the room raised their hands.

Tuesday night’s meeting was a chance for the community to listen and ask questions as they try and find a solution.

“None of us are as smart as all of us,” Mayor Melvin Carter said.

“We also need to have conversations about who’s buying all of this copper wire?” Ramsey County Attorney John Choi said.

Nineteen people have been charged this year in connection to this – up from two in 2022. It’s an annoying problem residents like Steve Gjerdingen have seen firsthand.

“Oh yeah, it’s very frustrating,” he said. “When you move into a neighborhood and think you have this level of lighting, and that level of lighting is gone, that’s the part that’s very frustrating.”

He’s not alone – St. Paul Police Deputy Chief Kurt Hallstrom has as well. A challenge for the department – the ratio of officers to places where this crime could happen.

“The way the city is laid out, there’s 40,000 street lights,” he said. “And 500 of us.”

Repairs are not cheap. St. Paul Public Works director Sean Kershaw says it can cost over a thousand dollars to make a repair once the copper wiring has been stolen. 

In 2023, the city spent $1.2 million on repairs. Thieves get – at max – about $50 for the wiring from these street lights.

“We want to kick out the market, for even that thirty dollars, so that we don’t have to spend a thousand, two thousand dollars replacing it,” Kershaw said.

Tuesday night’s meeting featured plenty of questions and possible solutions – some are farther along than others. One idea is at the state level, and would require anyone buying or selling copper material to have a state-issued license.

For residents like Gjerdingen, anything that can be done is a step in the right direction.

“I just hope that St. Paul can really get to the bottom of this,” he said. “It’s the kind of issue that can really kinda grow and become more of a problem and really affect the gut of the metro.”

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