Metal Theft Is Attacking America’s Critical Infrastructure — Here’s a Practical Playbook to Stop It

I’m going to say the quiet part out loud: metal theft isn’t just a property crime anymore. It has become a recurring attack on the systems that keep communities safe and connected—communications networks, utilities, transportation systems, and the field infrastructure that supports them.

And it’s happening at a scale that should make every public safety leader, infrastructure operator, and policymaker pay attention.

A national survey of communications providers reported 5,770 incidents of intentional theft and/or vandalism targeting communications infrastructure in just seven months (June–December 2024)—an average of 27 incidents per day. Those events impacted more than 1.5 million customers, with California and Texas alone accounting for 51% of reported incidents. In the same report, vandalism/theft-related outages averaged ~2,000 customers affected per outage and ~138 hours in duration.

Source: USTelecom, Protecting the Nation’s Critical Communications Infrastructure from Theft & Vandalism (Spring 2025) (PDF): View report

If you’ve lived through this problem from the operator side, those numbers feel… believable. Because metal theft isn’t just “stealing copper.” It’s cutting into networks, damaging cabinets, taking down systems, and creating cascading impacts where 911 services, dispatch operations, and critical communications can be degraded or interrupted.

This post is meant to be a resource—a practical, field-oriented playbook that agencies and infrastructure teams can use to reduce incidents, improve arrests, and harden sites without turning every location into a fortress.

Why metal theft keeps winning

Metal theft works for criminals because it exploits the same realities you deal with every day:

• Remote sites and limited after-hours staffing
• Predictable access points (fence lines, utility easements, cabinets, poles)
• Slow detection (many sites aren’t “noticed” until customers call)
• Weak evidence (no faces, no plates, no chain-of-custody)
• Connectivity assumptions (systems fail when cellular is congested or unreliable)

In other words: criminals aren’t beating “cameras.” They’re beating response time, site visibility, and evidence quality.

What the latest data says criminals target most

The USTelecom report provides useful clues about how to prioritize defenses. In the June–Dec 2024 dataset:

• The most common damage location was aerial/aerial cables (1,486 incidents)—a huge signal that the problem often isn’t “inside a building,” it’s on exposed infrastructure.
• The most common damage type was cuts into copper & fiber (1,915 incidents)—which tells you this is frequently destructive access, not clean removal.

Source: USTelecom report (PDF): View report

Translation: if you’re defending only cabinets or only a single site type, you’re probably missing where the majority of damage occurs.

A practical playbook: Deter, Detect, Document, Disrupt

When we design solutions at MAXSUR, we treat metal theft as an operational system problem, not a single-product problem. The best outcomes come from layered defense:

1) Deter: make the site look “expensive to touch”

Deterrence isn’t just signs. It’s a posture.

• Improve visibility around likely approach routes
• Add obvious indicators that surveillance is present
• Reduce concealment (trim or reconfigure what creates hiding lanes)
• Harden the “easy” entry points
• Use consistent site markings that signal monitoring and enforcement

Deterrence works best when it is credible: the site looks like it will generate identification-quality evidence quickly.

2) Detect: shorten time-to-awareness

Many organizations lose the game before it starts because they learn about theft only after service degradation or a physical inspection.

Detection should do two things:

• Trigger quickly (so you can respond faster)
• Trigger intelligently (so you don’t drown in nuisance alerts)

This is one reason we built systems like Longhorn—a long-duration field surveillance capability designed for deployments where power, connectivity, and human presence can’t be assumed.

Longhorn Long Duration Field Surveillance System

3) Document: evidence that actually holds up

If your camera captures a hoodie-shaped blur, you don’t have surveillance—you have footage.

For metal theft, you typically need:

• Faces (or at least consistent identifiers)
• Vehicles and movement paths
• Plate capture where feasible
• Time-stamped clips that preserve the sequence of events
• An evidence handling workflow (who accessed it, when, and how it’s exported)

This is where purpose-built capture devices (including models like Reconyx in the right roles) can be valuable—especially when configured correctly for the environment (angle, distance, lighting/IR behavior, and trigger strategy).

4) Disrupt: stop repeat hits with interdiction + attribution

Deterrence and documentation reduce incidents—but many regions are dealing with repeat offenders who learn patterns.

For sites experiencing recurring theft, interdiction systems can add a meaningful layer to the response strategy. That’s the intent behind WireTrap—built as a practical metal theft interdiction capability designed to support real-world deployments.

WireTrap Metal Theft Interdiction System

Note: Every deployment should be evaluated for safety, legality, and alignment with local policy.

A quick deployment checklist (field-friendly)

If you’re addressing metal theft at scale, use this as a starting point:

Site selection & prioritization

• Which sites have repeat incidents?
• Which sites create the biggest downstream impact if disrupted?
• Where is access easiest (roads, easements, fence lines)?

Detection strategy

• What should trigger alerts (motion zones, cabinet access, approach lanes)?
• What’s the tolerance for nuisance alerts?
• Who receives alerts after-hours—and what’s the response plan?

Evidence strategy

• Are camera angles set for identification (not just “activity”)?
• Is there a plan for night performance and lighting realities?
• Can exported evidence preserve chain-of-custody?

Connectivity reality

• What happens when cellular is congested or absent?
• Does the system still record locally and preserve evidence?
• Can the team retrieve evidence without “perfect internet”?

Operational integration

• Are patrols and dispatch aligned on what an alert means?
• Are you collecting the same evidence package every time?
• Are repeat incidents analyzed for patterns and adapted against?

The legal landscape matters (and it’s messy)

One of the reasons this issue persists is that metal theft policy and enforcement mechanisms vary widely across the country.

The Recycled Materials Association (ReMA) notes that all 50 states have passed laws intended to combat metals theft, but with varying requirements and “little uniformity between the states, and states frequently amend laws as conditions evolve. ReMA maintains a State Metals Theft Law Database as a public resource, including updates and state-by-state summaries.

Resource: ReMA – State Metals Theft Law Database: View resource

For agencies and infrastructure operators, the practical takeaway is simple: don’t assume your neighboring states rules match yours, and don’t assume requirements from five years ago are still current. Build your program with legal counsel and local partners who understand the current landscape.

Why I care about this (personally)

I’m passionate about solving metal theft because it’s one of those problems that quietly punishes everyone:

• Customers who lose service
• Communities impacted by degraded emergency communications
• Frontline techs who keep getting sent back into the same unsafe environments
• Agencies forced to respond to repeat incidents with limited resources

At MAXSUR, we want to help teams get ahead of the problem—not with hype, but with practical, deployable systems and field-proven workflows that improve detection, improve evidence, and reduce repeat hits.

If you’re dealing with this right now and want a second set of eyes on your current approach, reach out. Even if we’re not the right fit for the end solution, I’d rather point you in the right direction than watch another community take avoidable losses.

Sources & further reading

• USTelecom — Protecting the Nation’s Critical Communications Infrastructure from Theft & Vandalism (Spring 2025) (PDF): View report
• ReMA (Recycled Materials Association) — State Metals Theft Law Database: View resource