Busch Gardens Tampa worker accused of stealing brass brake plates from park

I'm not sure what brass is going for right now. But, that's an awfully stupid thing to do for what probably ammounted to less than $100.

"The material was valued at $1,100."

Wow, that's quite the temptation there. That's a decent amount of cash.

Jeff, that's probably the replacement cost for the park. Brass is definitely not $10 a pound.

Ok, I just called Celevland Scrap and it's going for about $2 a pound for clean scrap. I assume solid brass plates would be considered clean scrap. That's a lot higher that I expected. So that would only be about $200 in scrap value.

For the purpose of the crime, that doesn't matter. It's the value of the goods stolen from the park that counts.

For the purpose of the crime, yes the replacement value would apply. But losing your job for stealing something that has a street value of $200 seems silly. My guess is he was going to use the money to purchase the VQ system that Busch uses.

My guess is he was going to use the money to purchase the VQ system that Busch uses.

Fail. -1

^^ My point exactly.

Well he sure wasn't a enthusiast. He would hung them on his wall and admired them.

There are people stealing anything brass or copper that isn't nailed down (and even stuff that IS nailed down) lately. There was a church near here that had copper downspouts stolen off of it. I've read lots of stories about copper being stolen off of anything electrical throughout the country.

Our electricity goes out periodically because of people stealing copper electric wires and then melting them down to sell. It's a pain in the butt.

Actually.. the brass used on most brakes is an alloy. It's not pure brass, so that will effect the price.

And this happens at most larger parks a lot more than is reported.

Yep. Travis lives in West Virginia.

Red Garter Rob said:
...the brass used on most brakes is an alloy.

Brass itself is, by definition, an alloy of copper and zinc.

kpjb said:
Yep. Travis lives in West Virginia.

That's West (by Gawd) Virginia!

West Virginia is a very strange land indeed.

Strange, but awesome. We find ourselves heading to WV for the majority of our weekend camping trips.

West Virginia is nothing if not a giant ass campground.

Before my wife was able to (short) sell her house, someone broke into it and yanked all of the copper pipes. It cost $2k to replace it all (the labor being a significant portion of that, of course).