Harger: Pounds and pounds of stripped copper wire insulation recovered from Seattle homeless camp cleanups
Feb 28, 2026, 6:05 AM | Updated: 6:29 am
The copper is gone. What’s left behind tells the story.
Video sent to KIRO Newsradio by We Heart Seattle founder Andrea Suarez showed pounds and pounds of wire insulation hauled out of a Seattle encampment cleanup. The plastic casing that surrounds copper wire, stripped off, discarded, left for volunteers to deal with while the people responsible move on to the next target.
Suarez said she sees it at every single site she helps clean up now.
“This is everywhere,” she told KIRO Newsradio.
The copper itself has already been sold, almost certainly to a metal recycler, for cash, with no record of where it came from or who brought it in. The recycler asks no questions. The thief walks out with money. And We Heart Seattle volunteers bag up the evidence.
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It’s not just wire. It’s your barbecue propane tank, too
Suarez also sent KIRO Newsradio video of dozens, if not hundreds, of propane tanks pulled from Seattle encampments. The kind that sit on backyard barbecue grills across the city. Thieves are stealing them not for the propane, but for the brass fittings on top. Brass is a high-value scrap metal, and recyclers will buy it, no questions asked.
She also sent video of a man stripping copper wire in broad daylight. Because why not? The system is working fine for him.
A bill that could have helped just died in Olympia. Without a vote
This is exactly the problem Gary Ernsdorff, a senior deputy prosecuting attorney with the King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office, has been trying to solve. Ernsdorff backed Senate Bill 6190, which would have required metal recyclers to photograph purchased materials, upload records to a searchable statewide database, and hold materials long enough for law enforcement to investigate.
Simple stuff. The same rules pawn shops already follow.
The bill died last week without ever getting a vote in the Senate. Not defeated. Not amended. Just left to expire while lawmakers were, according to varying reports, too busy with other things.
“It is very disappointing that they couldn’t find time to finish this important business,” Ernsdorff wrote in an email to KIRO Newsradio. “I got messages from the industry right away who were similarly disappointed and who face another year of multi-million-dollar losses.”
Sound Transit has been hit by copper wire thieves at least three times in the past month, shutting down light rail service for tens of thousands of riders. Lumen reported more than 350 copper wire theft incidents in Washington last year alone.
The wire insulation piling up at Seattle encampment cleanups is not a coincidence. It’s a supply chain. The thieves strip it, the recyclers buy it, the volunteers clean it up, and Olympia can’t find the time to do anything about it.
Andrea Suarez and her volunteers keep showing up. It would be nice if our legislators did too.
Charlie Harger is the host of “Seattle’s Morning News” on KIRO Newsradio. You can read more of his stories and commentaries here. Follow Charlie on X and email him here.
