[JustinD]

Originally Posted by samosa4u

The theft was discovered shortly before Black History Month. But Lutz said in an interview after the news conference that he was hopeful the motive wasn't racial, but that the thieves just saw the bronze as monetarily valuable.

Not sure how this makes any sense. If the thieves just saw the statue as monetarily valuable, then why the hell was it found burned up in a trash can?

I can't imagine it has anything to do with racism unless the news decides to run the hype-train per usual. It has everything to do with crime, stupidity, selfishness, and disrespect.

Sadly theft of statues, bells, and bronze work has been commonplace for years. It is so common of late in my area that the bronze plaques for historic sites are so hard to keep up with replacement that many are now missing. Several years ago an 8 foot statue of Jesus was removed from a cross a stolen from a local church overnight that was mounted at the pulpit, not outdoors. The sad part was it was made to look bronze, it was not.

I have a friend whose family owns a large cemetery, they have had to hire 24 hour watchmen to stop the theft of the decorative bronze urns or statuary in the historic graves.

The Detroit police now require a call from scrapyards of any deliveries of new copper (stolen from job sites) and decorative bronze items (again stolen). The thieves now just sledgehammer the items to unrecognizable chunks to sell, or like in this case...bonfire and try to melt it to an unrecognizable state.

This is the next step after the scrappers have already stolen all the copper and fixtures from any home that sits unoccupied for a bit too long. There are hundreds or likely thousands of stories in the city of people just leaving for work and returning to every centimeter of aluminum sliding removed from their home.

It's amazing what people do for an easy payday and to avoid a 9 to 5.