Copper thefts impact railroad restoration in Silvis

The number of copper thefts in the Quad Cities has skyrocketed over the past few years, impacting everything from farms to railroads. Illinois State Rep. Gregg Johnson (D-72) and Erik Hoofnagle, project manager for the Railroading Heritage of Midwest America (RRHMA) in Silvis, spoke with Our Quad Cities News via Zoom to discuss the impact of these thefts.

“We’ve been beset by a bunch of thieves who are coming after us for copper and basically vandalizing our equipment on site,” Hoofnagle said. “It’s actually been going on since 2013 or 2014, according to our tenant, who’s been there for the last 40 years. It seems like it’s the same group of people, although there’s has been some other infiltrators who have come in who have actually been caught and released. But the same group of people that we caught in March of 2023 are currently getting continuances in court instead of getting sentenced. In the meantime, we keep getting robbed or stolen from.”

“It’s not so much the copper,” he continued. “Copper has a very small value for the cables. It’s the damage to the equipment. I mean, the scrap value of what’s being taken is a couple thousand (dollars) maybe, but the damage to the equipment is in the hundreds of thousands of dollars or more. Some of the equipment on our property is so old that some of this stuff can’t be replaced anymore. You can’t find parts for it, so you have to make parts from scratch. So, it starts to get to be very expensive.”

“I think it’s not just the copper theft we have,” Johnson said. “There’s a lot of crime that’s taking place that apparently, we don’t have language, or there’s not an interpretation on different judges, how they’re interpreting, how they can keep individuals detained. I wouldn’t say this is directly a Safety Act issue, but it is a conversation about continuing to do work on legislation that figures out how to hold people accountable for their actions”

“If people are not going to stop committing crimes, we have to figure out a way to protect the public from them. In this situation where we have two individuals who keep going back to the railway, keep going back behind the city of Silvis and going back there and stealing these items and then trying to make money off them, and we don’t have a way to stop them from doing this,
Johnson said.

“We have to figure out a way; if they’re going to continue to steal, then they have to be detained. They have to be put in a place where they cannot continue to do this, or we will start losing the business there,” he said. “We don’t want to drive businesses out. I know some of the businesses that are involved in this great project that’s going to be a leader in tourism down here, we have to make sure that their assets are protected, because it’s very costly.”

Why are trains being targeted? “There’s a lot of copper on a locomotive or passenger car, for instance, and it’s affixed with nuts and bolts and brackets,” Hoofnagle said. “Obviously, they don’t have the time to undo it and take it properly, so they just cut what’s easiest for them to cut, which then leaves us with the labor and materials to try and put it all back together. It’s not stuff that you can just splice and put back together. They’re specialized parts. Some of it has to be made from scratch, special order, so none of it is cheap when you have to buy it and put it back on the equipment.”

“From what I understand, there is one individual who is currently being detained on a separate charge,” Johnson said. “We have another who has been released and been arrested multiple times for this offense, and we’ve got to protect the community.”

The thefts have done more that deprive the railroad of copper. “The value of what’s being stolen is not substantial,” Hoofnagle said. “It’s the destruction of our equipment that’s expensive. Lately, we’ve been putting up quite a few more efforts in regard to security, which takes away from our real focus, which is restoring locomotives and providing some entertainment for the area.

“We’re trying to develop the yard for commercial and industrial uses and to try and bring people who will employ local residents to work here.” he said. “They’re a little hesitant to set up shop because it doesn’t seem like there’s an end to this crime. Even though it seems relatively petty, it just keeps going and going and going. It seems like it’s the same people that have been caught out there numerous times and then just released.”

Johnson has first-hand experience with thefts like these. “I personally went through that during the pandemic in my neighborhood for several months, with a neighbor across the street who eventually did get incarcerated. We had to really take aggressive action in order to get that done, basically catch him eluding the police and running from them in an operation that was similar to what we saw in the Moline riverfront last week,” he said.

“Those who think that there are victimless crimes are wrong, even in cases like what we saw on the Moline riverfront,” he said. “An individual I talked to last week, a law enforcement chief, told me there are families who feel violated because those plaques were put there to honor the memories of family members long gone and a lot of those families would have picnics there to honor their memory. Now, one individual commits a criminal act and those memories are wiped out. There has to be repercussions for those sorts of actions.”

Hoofnagle worries that copper thefts can lead to bigger problems. “My real fear is it’s not just happening to us,” he said. “It’s happening to all our neighbors in Silvis. It’s also happening to our neighbors in Moline and East Moline. So, this is an area-wide issue.”

“I don’t want to be a fear monger, but my big fear is, at some point somebody’s going to get confronted. Us against them, them against us,” he said. “I don’t know what the circumstances are going to be, but even if it was a homeowner, and these guys are going through their garage for tools to come steal at our property, and there’s a confrontation, somebody’s going to get injured, killed, worst case scenario.”

Some blame the Pretrial Fairness Act (Safety Act) for accused criminals to be released, but Johnson says the act has its benefits. “I think we could all agree that a system that allowed someone to buy freedom and not another due to the nature of an offense is inherently unfair,” he said. “You either should be detained or you shouldn’t. I think a lot of this is we need to get our numbers back.”

“We need to find out when, how often, when someone shows up for arraignment, that they’re coming back to their court hearing,” he said. “We need to get the numbers on if they’re appearing, but we also need to have a mechanism in place that if they are released, and then they go out and continue to commit the same nature of offense, what are we going to do about that?”

Hoofnagle says police are doing what they can to help. “The police have been fantastic with us. I mean, they’re trying to do extra patrols,” he said. “They’re trying to come around as much as possible, but there’s a bigger community here, and it can’t all be about us. As much as they work hard to try and prevent this, even when there’s an apprehension, I think their hands are tied, which is frustrating for them, and it’s frustrating for us. I don’t know what the final answer is here, but something’s got to give. I mean, this has been going on now for well over 10 years.”

Johnson is in favor of the Safety Act, but says changes are necessary. “I will say one thing that is really on my mind is the fact that we agreed that individuals, as long as it’s a non-violent offense, non-detainable offense, that they could then be released, go back live their lives,” he said. “You don’t want to take people’s livelihoods away. However, I do believe that they’re going back on and then committing the same types of crime, or the same crime while they are out awaiting their court date. We need to look at a way to possibly consider that to run consecutive to the charge that they were actually released on.”

“I’m all about creating conditions where people reach their fullest potential and that they are not treated unfairly by a system,” Johnson continued. “I’m also about holding people accountable for their actions. I think we have to continue to figure out how we’re going to strike that balance where you can’t have people getting arrested even for property damage day after day after day and having there be no accountability for that.”

Someone whose car is burglarized is a victim, he said. “Their livelihood is being impacted because they just lost their transportation or their way to work. I think we have to make sure that we keep that in mind as we navigate through the finer points of the language as well.”

Johnson will bring the issue up when he returns to Springfield. “We’re going to start heading back into the spring session next week and I have had a conversation with a few of my colleagues,” he said. “I was just informed last night that I’m going to be vice chair of the Police Fire Commission in the Illinois House. I’m honored to get that appointment, so we will have these conversations about just what we can do. It’s always important that as a representative down here in the Quad Cities, did I go to Springfield and tell them what’s going on in my district? I’ve had meetings with constituents who are in their neighborhoods who feel like their neighborhood is being terrorized by an individual. The authorities feel like their hands are tied because there’s nothing we can do.”

“People need to understand that there was a reason that the Safety Act is also referred to as the Pretrial Fairness Act,” he said. “Clearly, there were fixes that need to be made. It was a beginning and not an ending. I think people need to be patient and understand that once we get the data from across the state, we’ll be able to continue to make adjustments. People need to also understand that with my background in corrections, three plus decades, my understanding is that we have had a justice system that, quite frankly, has been very unfair to those who have lesser means. I’m going to continue to be a voice for our district in places like Springfield and try to create a better act as we move forward. We have to give our district a voice in Springfield and I’m a pretty loud voice, no matter where I’m at.”

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