For a while, between two and six years ago, there were a LOT of thefts of A/C units from houses, schools, etc. Two houses in my neighborhood were severely damaged when someone did exactly what was described above--ripped the walls apart to get the piping out. ANd yeah, they ignored all the easily-fenced electronics/etc., and ONLY stole things with potentially lots of copper and whatnot in them, including all the motors in the house (fans, vacuums, even the motors in the stove vents, by ripping the cieling out), transformers like FL ballasts, phone wiring, network cable, etc. Even cutting cords off of appliances that were resellable even at a yard sale for a hell of a lot more than the copper in the cords!
THe most dangerous of the thefts was when someone figured out that the valves for gas lines are brass, and therefore have copper as a component. They started ripping them out of the ground with chains on trucks. One guy tried this in broad daylight not far from here, at the corner of a major intersection next to a school. He tied the chain to his rear axle, and the other end to the main gas line cutoff valves that come out of the ground there, and are probably 8 or 10 inches in diameter. You can guess what happneed. :lol: He tried to run since he couldn't drive the truck away anymore, but the cops that were there at the school watching for other kinds of morons easily caught him.
The water cutoff valves up at Arrowhead mall got ripped out the same way, shortly before I started working at that CompUSA, and when I got there had been replaced and had cages welded over them all with big big locks on them, making it a lot harder to quickly rip them out.
They STILL steal the brass flush valves assembly (the size of your forearm and fist) off mens' urinals in restrooms around the city; they did it about a year and a half ago, maybe two, where I work. I see an "out of order" urinal every few weeks caused by this theft, in my travels around thsi part of the valley.
A year ago, they stole (and destroyed trying to steal) the fans for the A/C units on top of the bulding where I work, destroying over half of the A/C capacity for the building's businesses. The building owners still have not replaced them all (some of the rest of the A/C units themselves were damaged beyond repair in the process, and I guess that's an awful lot of money to replace ones that size).