“You know, I’ve got to get up every day, I’ve got to put a crop in, I’ve got to get a crop out, and I’ve got a family I want to see. I do those things, because it’s the life I’ve chosen,” he said. “But it’s not right for a guy to take the wire out of my bins, take it to a scrap yard and get paid in cash and not pay taxes on it. This guy doesn’t have a real job, doesn’t have to pass a drug test, and the next thing he does is wait until I fix the wiring in my grain bins and then hits me again. I don’t like a copper thief.” Kelly, who runs a law practice in Carlisle and continues to direct, along with his brother, the family’s farming operation, understands the difficulty in getting a conviction in metal theft cases. “I’ve been a special prosecutor. I’ve been a judge, and I practice law,” Kelly said. “I know what it takes to bring about prosecution. And that’s not easy (with this type of theft), and there’s good reason for that.” He says just having a photo of someone at your grain bins doesn’t automatically mean a conviction. “You have to prove a person is guilty of a criminal act beyond a reasonable doubt. With the epidemic of metal theft we have, the police are getting a bad rap for not catching these people, but they’re just as frustrated as anyone,” Kelly said. “They’re tired of pulling up and seeing the plastic clippings from the wire casing that has been cut and having a mad landowner, because they haven’t caught somebody. They know they
Wire theft The amount of copper wire used at grain bin sites along with the sites’ remote but accessible setups make them targets for thieves.
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Arkansas Agriculture
Keith Sutton
need something more.”