Better bring a lawn chair -- bleacher thefts reported in two towns

By Anne Baker, Globe Correspondent

To some, they are a fine place to spend a summer afternoon, rooting for a favorite team and chatting with neighbors. To others, bleachers are large chunks of valuable metal sitting in the grass, waiting to be stolen and sold as scrap.

The recent thefts of bleachers in two Massachusetts towns suggested that the state has joined a national trend.

Spencer police arrested two men last week and said they planned to summons a third to court after aluminum bleachers were reported stolen from the fairgrounds on Sept. 12. In a separate incident, two men were arrested Aug. 26 in Abington after they allegedly stole bleachers from an elementary school and began cutting them up in one of the men's backyards.

Bleacher thefts have also been reported in places such as Buena Vista, N.J., Rockford, Mich., and Chesapeake City, Md.

Other scrap metal heists that have made the news in Massachusetts recently included the theft of $500,000 worth of decorative cast-iron trim that had been removed from the Longfellow Bridge and the theft of the 1,400-pound handicapped chair lift from a Salem fraternal organization.

As the price of scrap metal has rocketed to record levels this summer, thefts of everything from manhole covers to sculptures in a cemetery to the copper piping in foreclosed houses have been reported.

Beacon Hill lawmakers are seeking to join the majority of other states in the country that have passed laws to increase regulations on how scrap metal is bought and sold. But so far they've made little progress, the Globe reported last week.

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