The interesting feature here is they were taking unrefined copper from an old copper mine that was abandoned in 1895. Obviously illegal, but a lot more enterprising than breaking into a house and stealing the wires and pipes
You have to be pretty desperate to mine raw copper by hand.
Is anyone looking at the social factors that would drive someone to do this? What support network could be developed to help these folks out of such extreme poverty that you are willing to make something like this your business plan.
I don't know the circumstances, but compared to armed robbery or smash and grabs or some really desperate crime, this seems more entrepreneurial, like "hey there's still some copper in the abandoned mine". And it's essentially a victimless crime - it seems like there might be some conservation implications, like they disturbed a bat nest (which could also lead to histoplasmosis), but not the same as property crime, more like illegally cutting down a couple trees deep in the forest.
All that to say, desperation may be an element, but the sophistication required indicates there's probably more to it than than.
And making someone go to jail for 30 days for this is just stupid
Odd. Why not just fill out the paperwork to get permission to extract copper? There are mines all over the US that have outdated claims and could likely be accessed if one was willing to take the substantial risks of reactivating 100+ year old mines. Some are BLM land, some on private land for sale. Copper, silver, gold and much more. There are youtube channels that follow people exploring these old mines for their historic value. Left behind bottles, caps, cans, dynamite boxes, denim jeans, boots, ore carts, rails, food tins, snuff and chew tins. Some of those items are worth more than the minerals when factoring in the cost to smelt and purify them.
Just breaking in and taking it is probably way less labor-intensive than applying for it. They could probably do that 100 times before being caught. Finding out some random people in the middle of the night in bumfuck abandoned nowhere is probably harder to catch than a DUI and even that is done like 100 times on average before being caught.
At the end of the day they got away with a misdemeanor and a few hundred in fines. It's basically no sweat and they'll be back at it somewhere else for another 100 goes without getting caught.
You're right, the claims would eat into their costs if doing this once. But with a claim [1] they could mine 24/7/365 and even bring cheap labor along assuming they know what they are doing. Another advantage of working a claim is that one does not have to rush or cut corners further increasing risk. Some of those have partially covered multi-level stopes. One wrong step can send someone several hundred feet down jagged rocks.
It's hard to be against these guys when they are "stealing" from a mine that was abandoned 125 years ago back in 1898.
Yes they were trespassing, but hopefully they stole more than $450 of copper that the fine implied because that makes the prosecution look quite petty. They could have make more stealing car stereos.
This just feels like large corporations locking up a counties natural resources.
Michigan has quite a history of thieves stealing copper. Detroit with all its abandoned houses was quite the target for years. Copper thieves would strip houses destroying them and then take everything else including furnaces and sinks. But picking is getting scarce and now they're attacking pumping stations built in the fifties to pump water out of below ground freeways. A few years ago Detroit had a five inch rain and it took them days with rented pumps to begin using the freeways again.
Did a little searching and found that thieves have been arrested in W.Va. as well for breaking into an old copper mine. Thing is about Michigan's Upper Peninsula the people are poor, jobs are scarce and there are dozens if not hundreds of old abandoned copper mines.
It's pretty facile to draw a comparison between Detroit and Keweenaw Peninsula. Detroit is closer to Washington DC than to Calumet, both by road miles and by travel time. There are hardly any two places in the U.S. more different demographically, politically, culturally, and linguistically. That part of the U.P. has more in common with Montana - even down to the cuisine - than it has in common with Detroit.
