On Thursday, AT&T, Comcast, Houston police, and the Harris County Sheriff's Office hosted a news conference to discuss the growing problem.
"Any theft is a problem, but when you're talking about people's ability to call 911, that becomes a life-threatening problem," Sgt. Robert Carson with the Houston Police Metal Theft Unit said.
On Feb. 2, neighbors on Merriwood Lane in north Houston witnessed a truck full of thieves cutting wire strung from utility poles in their neighborhood at about 7:30 a.m. They captured the thieves on camera before they sped away with the truck bed full of wiring.
The act caused a utility pole to fall on a home and AT&T customers to lose Internet services.
"Somebody in a black pickup truck wearing blue jeans and a T-shirt is probably not the guy who needs to be on that pole, and they need to be calling us right away," Carson said.
He said that while they know that thefts are on the rise, it is challenging to quantify them because they are not always reported and are categorized in different ways in the police's internal system.
AT&T, Comcast, and T-Mobile are all being affected, according to Carson.
"Legislatively, AT&T is working with our industry partners to introduce a bill to increase penalties for those that are stealing critical infrastructure and telecom wire," Tanya Makany-Rivera with AT&T said. "We want it to be something that they don't want to do because it will be a severe penalty."
Houston police, DPS, and the Harris County Sheriff's Office are all part of a year-old task force to target the problem.
"The main goal has always been to stop the theft because it's driving up (the companies) losses and the cost is being passed on to consumers," he explained.
Carson explained that thieves are melting the copper down to sell it since scrapyards have restrictions on what they can buy.
Copper prices have increased since the beginning of the year.
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