My Fun Evening (IE. Kids breaking into Work)

[sgtcluels]

I sure did not have an enjoyable evening last night. I got to sleep around 12:30am or so after watching a movie post ball game. Around 2:15am my work cell phone rings, I stumble to it, and didn't get to it in time. Look at the callerid, it's the alarm company that monitors our Menomonee Falls plant we closed last year. (Pilgrim and 45). In the past we've had plenty of false alarms due to the building being in severe disrepair. (Water leaks generally dripping on sensors tripping them). But since it was dry out, something was up. Call them, and turns out that we had a motion sensor burglary alarm go off, and the local police department was dispatched. I think I sounded like a wanker on the phone as I was pretty sleepy. But i head out, 30 minutes to cross town and get gas.

 

I arrive on site, and there's about 4 Falls police squad cards. Lights on, and they've built a perimeter. The officers are using their PAs and that they will be unleashing a K9 unit onto the grounds. I talked to the on scene commander (Sgt. Eric) and was informed that there were 5 suspects on the premise, at least 2 inside and they have in custody 3 of the 5 (2 Girls 1 Guys b/t age of 19 and 21). Exciting. They also had 2 additional units from the Waukesha Country Sherrif department on their way, including one K9 unit. It's around 4am when the Sherrif Department arrives. They continue to broadcast surrender procedures via the loud speaker system, as they come up with a plan.;

 

Around 4:30am they proced to clear the outside of the building with the K9 unit and a backup unit walking the perimeter. They dog hits on something on the old storage shed in the back of the building (Looks like an aircraft hanger) and the two additional dirty trespassers surrender. Around 5am. It takes till around 5:30am to actually process the punks and prepare for us to enter to check out the damage. So around 6am, we finally get into the building and check out the damage.

 

Some spray paint, some broken windows. Nothing to bad. Around 7am we clear the building and 7:30 I get to head home. But off course the suns up, so it's making it prety hard to sleep. http://forum.brewerfan.net/images/smilies/frown.gif

 

The moral of the story is, don't be on the emergency call list for work. /It'll ruin your weekend.

[Menotti80]

that sucks sgt, sorry to hear that. well at least the damage wasnt too great

[JoeHova]

I guess I may be ignorant on this issue, but if the plant is closed and in severe disrepair, who cares what happens to it? Sucks that you had to get up to deal with something the company you work for doesn't even want. Also, sucks for the kids, who probably figured it was abandoned and just went for a makeout session/general mischief. They probably got a bit of a surprise when 6 squad cars showed up at a collapsing factory.

[dadofandrew]

I'm sure there's valuable stuff in there, perhaps millions of dollars, depending on what type of "plant" it is.

[Invader3K]

I guess I may be ignorant on this issue, but if the plant is closed and in severe disrepair, who cares what happens to it? Sucks that you had to get up to deal with something the company you work for doesn't even want. Also, sucks for the kids, who probably figured it was abandoned and just went for a makeout session/general mischief. They probably got a bit of a surprise when 6 squad cars showed up at a collapsing factory.

Yeah, but if one of the kids got seriously hurt, the property owners would probably have to pay for it.

[sgtcluels]

We've had a series of break ins over the past year. One, the person broke in, disabled the alarm system (Some how), then proceeded to dismantle and pull all the 220 volt copper wire from the entire plant. This went un-noticed for 2 weeks. By the time someone went to check on the plant, they removed $180,000 worth of scrap metal and copper wire. This also caused the entire heating system to go down, thankfully none of the pipes broke, but we were just lucky.

 

This is in Menomonee Falls, so it's a bit of surprise, as it's a run down building. Probably was a inside job, from someone who used to work with us. They went as far as pulling all the cable from inside 6000 volt transformers. It was crazy.

 

There is the liability issue, plant used to do metal stamping, so there are press pits. About I'd say 20 - 30 feet tall, someone falls it in it, it's our fault. Same with extremely high voltage to feed the inside substations. Plus when you show someone a building full of spray paint, your estimated value goes down a bit. http://forum.brewerfan.net/images/smilies/frown.gif

 

They did also break some windows, cut some chains on fences, graffiti so it wasn't harmless. The plants alarm system was just recently restored after 2 weeks of it being off (some boxes shorted causing false alarms), probably why the kids didn't care about the alarm going off. .

 

They probably were a bunch of kids just looking to go play spin the bottle or some crazy thing. But then give yourself up, and this probably would have all just gone away. But wasting resources for 6 hours is lame.

 

We also used to have a plant on 62nd and State. When we closed it, we sold it to a developmental company. They transformed the back parking lot into a walgreens, well there was tons of contaminated dirt temporarily put inside the plant until we finished corporate operations at the front. Well the inside of the plant had zero motion sensors, and after Corporate moved out, and before the developer started working on a new site. A bunch of kids found a broken window (or broke it) and proceeded to build an entire skate park and bmx park from the dirt and all the empty space. To bad they didn't know the dirt had toxin in it.

[LouisEly]

and pull all the 220 volt copper wire from the entire plant. This went un-noticed for 2 weeks. By the time someone went to check on the plant, they removed $180,000 worth of scrap metal and copper wire.

 

There you go. Copper is very valuable these days. Just ask anyone who owns a factory/plant or construction site.

 

Copper is so valuable that they are considering doing away with the penny. It actually costs more than what a penny is worth to make it, and I am all for eliminating the penny and rounding up or down to the nearest 5 cents. They do it in Australia, and it works just fine.