A few weeks ago a reader told us that the iron gate outside her Crown Heights house had been stolen, and this weekend the Times has a piece on how the same crime happened recently in Clinton Hill. Gates were lifted from houses on Gates Avenue and Cambridge Place last month. “This is a crime that pops up from time to time in different areas of brownstone Brooklyn, says Robert Perris, district manager of Community Board 2. Usually people have never heard of it and don’t take steps to protect their gates until it happens on their own block. Many believe the gates are either being stolen so they can be sold at scrap metal yards (scrap metal’s value is up, apparently). Leslie Lewis, the community justice liaison for Marty Markowitz, floats this theory, however: The gates themselves are worth far more than the metal. I suspect a contractor or someone else who needed replacement gates for a project just grabbed what they needed. Anyone know of other neighborhoods that have been hit?
Thievery at the Gates [NY Times]
Gate Thief Strikes Twice in Broad Daylight [Brownstoner]