Last week, Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann announced the arrest of a man who had allegedly stolen at least 200 bronze cemetery flower vases from Meridian Memorial Park Cemetery, and then took them to a scrap metal dealer to sell them for cash on three separate occasions.

Robert Eugene Davis was arrested by the Lauderdale County Sheriff’s Department and charged with grand larceny in the case, and Hosemann levied fines against the alleged buyer of the vases, M-D Metals LLC of Decatur. The company is alleged to have paid a total of $1,043.60 for the vases, which collectively weighed nearly half a ton.

The company was charged under a statute called the Mississippi Scrap Metal Dealer Registration Act of 2008. The law requires scrap metal dealers to adhere to a list of requirements, including registering with the state, submitting to inspections, and reporting details of transactions in which they buy scrap metal. All this information is kept in a database, for sharing among law enforcement agencies.

Under the law, dealers are required to collect and report:

The dealer must hold the purchased metal for at least three days, and must pay by check or electronic transaction, waiting at least three days to mail or authorize the payment. The information collected from scrap metal dealers is compiled into a database, which can be accessed by law enforcement agencies. Hosemann employs investigators, who visit scrap yards (often unannounced and undercover) to monitor their compliance.

The law covers a variety of metal products, including copper wiring, rods, tubing or radiators; railroad track components; agricultural components, such as irrigation wiring, pipes or grain bin components; several types of aluminum (excluding aluminum cans); and other miscellaneous items, such as stainless steel sinks, metal bridge pilings; beer kegs, manhole covers, and bronze cemetery markers or statues.

Stealing from a cemetery is a wanton act even most criminals would shy away from; you’d think cities of the dead would be free from such greed if for no other reason than superstition. But as we have seen, thieves will steal from churches, orphanages and nonprofit organizations, as well as from for-profit businesses and government agencies with equal malice.

I remember attending a news conference several years ago in which Hosemann announced the program. The meeting was held at Magnolia Speech School, an organization that helps young people with developmental issues. The school had recently been victimized by thieves making off with the copper pipes inside their air conditioning units. Replacing the units was a major blow for the small organization, costing a reported $110,000.

As prices for copper and other precious metals had risen sharply, thieves had been stealing everything they could get their hands on. Often, such acts can affect public safety. Criminals are not picky or careful about what they’ll do to make money; some crooks had even taken to cutting down utility lines for the metals inside. Hosemann notes that, in 2008, many Jackson area residents didn’t hear tornado warning sirens because thieves had stolen the copper wire from the sirens.

Hosemann says he was motivated to action partly because of the theft of the air conditioning unit from the speech school. “That was so egregious to me, that I came back and got involved,” he says. “I am just not going to tolerate people stealing from cemeteries and deaf schools.”

Despite drafting a law and getting it passed, though, there was no money to fund the initiative. Hosemann reached out to a Texas company called Leads Online, which specializes in technology solutions to help catch criminals. Leads Online agreed to help fund the program’s startup. There was initial opposition from some in the metal industry, and some went to court in an unsuccessful bid to change certain provisions of the bill, citing potential losses from the “tag and hold” provisions of the law.

Now, eight years later, it would be hard to argue with the program’s success. Hosemann notes that the database has helped solve 21 cases of stolen metal since its inception, with $55,000 in fines being collected. The database has also helped to solve other crimes that weren’t related to metal theft, and is credited by many with reducing metal theft incidents.

Hosemann reports the industry (consisting of 139 licensed scrap-metal dealers) has been mostly supportive of the effort; dealers who buy stolen metal pollute the reputation of companies in their industry that are trying to run their businesses ethically and legally, he says.

The next step, Hosemann notes, is to enlarge the circle of law enforcement agencies that can access the database. In August, he’ll hold a meeting in the Delta town of Stoneville to advise law enforcement from Mississippi and surrounding states how they can take advantage of the database. The Delta is a fitting location for such a meeting; farmers throughout the region have been victimized by people stealing components from irrigation units on which they depend to water their crops during the brutal Mississippi summer.

For more information about the metal theft law and its provisions, visit https://www.sos.ms.gov/Education-Publications/Documents/Downloads/Metal-theft-consumers.pdf.

Contact Bill Moak at moakconsumer@gmail.com.