There’s a stretch of Interstate 84 in Portland, near where it connects to Interstate 205, that for weeks last year was unnervingly dark at night.
The reason: many of the streetlights weren’t working. They’d been badly damaged by people stealing expensive copper wire. In the Portland metro area alone, the Oregon Department of Transportation spent about $720,000 repairing streetlights wrecked by thieves between November 2023 and November 2024, the department told The Oregonian/OregonLive.
The pace of thefts hasn’t slowed. So far in 2025, copper bandits have already done more than $500,000 worth of damage to streetlights and lighting junction boxes in the Portland metro, using prybars, bolt cutters, torches and sledge hammers to get at the valuable metal inside them…