Volunteer Cop in Phone Cable Rip-Off

PATTAYA: -- A Pattaya volunteer traffic cop and his two alleged accomplices were caught red-handed with a cut up 50-metre long stretch of cable that had just been sliced from the phone line at Sukhumvit Road km162-163.

Pattaya, 31 October 2010: Mr. Phornthawee Siriphornpreeda [35], the accomplice of a second-hand shop proprietor, Woraphot Sripraco [44], who doubled as a Pattaya Traffic Volunteer, was caught in a police raid with 31 pieces of stolen phone cable that he’d intended to give to his two accomplices at Petronas Petrol Station, Krathinglai-Rayong.

Full story HERE

PATTAYA DAILY NEWS

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It seems as there is no end to this. Steel street cover plates, water meters, street lights, power transformers, along with telephone and power cables; they all seem to be the most common items that are frequently ripped off. I had never heard of anything like this until I came to Thailand.

I have had 5 phone cables suppling phone service to my home stolen, not to mention the number of times the power cables and street lights were stolen over the past 5 years.

I remembered a few years ago the late Prime Minister Samak (I called him Mr. Happy toilet) was complaining about the huge yearly expense to the government, in Bangkok alone. It's in the billions of baht!

It makes you wonder how this is so easily done, especially without anyone ever noticing. Where would you unload used power transformers? How can the owners of 10 houses in a Pattaya village wake up to find their water meters had been stolen during the night? There was a soi near soi Wat Boon that I went down once, which was recently completed prior to me driving on it. Every sewer cover plate on the soi was stolen! A very serious safety hazard! A while back, a car fell into a sewer hole next to the curb on Pattaya Beach road because the steel cover plate was stolen. How can this be accomplished with people present on that road 24 hrs a day?

I've often suspected some government officials and employee's were/are involved, as practically now one ever seems to be caught. The only ones that have seemed to be caught were some power cable thieves. They were caught dead, but their accomplices escaped and weren't ever caught!

It's about time some others were caught!

Today i just finded out that someone had stealed 2 out of the 6 small mango trees in the garden, hopefully not by the police as in this article, i am wondering if it is time to start checking on how many kilograms of land we are sitting on, just in case these opportunist thaifs start getting even lower.... :ph34r:

i put out a dog bowl for the local dogs to get a bit of food and the bowl always gets nicked..no there is no limit to what will get stolen, news reports on TV regularly report thefts from temples.