Continuing on a common theme, the police department was too busy to identify the men over the phone to a reporter, but an officer was able to confirm that neither arrestee was Sonny or Givens. The officer could not explain how the arrested men were connected to the case, but said Sonny and Givens had not been charged with any crimes. Despite his frustration, Reed said he does not blame the police for originally declining to look into the theft.

“I’m not happy that that’s the process, but I certainly wouldn’t blame the police department,” he said, adding that he holds the Oakland City Council and other upper city staff managers responsible for under-funding law enforcement. This, he says, confines an understaffed police force to investigating “the big stuff that’s hard to pursue, and letting the little stuff go rampant.”

Yoell said the police department often pursues violent-crime leads over theft cases. “If somebody is being injured or murdered, it takes precedence over theft of copper wire,” he said. “On the other hand, the community deserves a balanced response (to all types of crime).”

There were over 4,000 burglaries in Oakland last year, Yoell said, and with just a handful of theft investigators, it can be difficult for the police to solve cases. Yoell said the department plans to hire more officers, but the city is simply not giving enough money to the police department.

“We’re constantly asking for more investigators. When we have the ability (pay for more) detectives, we will look into (more cases),” he said. “It’s up to the city and what efforts they’ll take.”

The city’s efforts so far don’t impress Reed. Several calls to the office of Councilmember Jane Brunner, who represents the district where Reed’s shop is, were not immediately returned.

“If every city councilmember had to go out and take crime reports for two weeks, that would probably change,” Reed said.

Nevertheless, Reed doesn’t expect change anytime soon. He thinks the city will continue to gamble on public safety in an effort to save money.

“Oakland’s played that game for decades,” Reed said.

Reed, who owns Reed Brothers Security on Telegraph Avenue, arrived at work on Sept. 18 to find $800 worth of copper wire missing. The wire had been bolted to welding equipment and locked with a chain and padlock on one of the store’s trucks.

“It was really heavy, finely stranded copper,” he said of the $4-per-foot wire, used for creating extremely hot temperatures capable of melting steel. Copper wire is popular with thieves, who sell it to recycling plants.

Because the wire was imprinted with the store’s logo, Reed knew it could be identified if found. He contacted local recycling plants, and sure enough, Custom Alloy Scrap Sales on Peralta Street called him later that morning: it had his copper.

Custom Alloy requires recyclers to present a driver’s license and to have a photograph taken of them and their product. The rule allowed Reed to obtain photos of a homeless man named Sonny, who sold the wire, and a copy of the driver's license of Michael Givens, who let Sonny use his identification to sell the wire for all of $64. The photos led Reed to believe he had his thieves, but it would be the first of many twists and turns in his investigation.

At Custom Alloy’s request, Givens went to Reed Security Brothers, where he told Reed he had helped Sonny sell the wire, but had not been aware it was stolen. Givens, who said he thought he was doing a good deed when he helped Sonny sell the wire, told Reed Sonny frequents another local recycling plant. To top that off, Givens delivered another surprise — he said he had once worked as a police officer for the Oakland Police Department.

Givens makes his living as a recycler, but his career didn’t start out that way. Lt. Mike Yoell, a member of the police department’s theft unit who reviewed this case, confirmed that Givens worked as a police officer for eight years before being fired more than 15 years ago. Givens could not be contacted to comment for this story. He told Reed his cell phone was stolen a few days before the copper theft and he could not afford to purchase a new one; there is no phone number listed under his name.

Thinking he knew who the thieves were, Reed called the police again. With a copy of Givens’ driver’s license and a photo of Sonny, Reed thought the police would surely investigate the case.

But according to Reed, the officer who arrived that afternoon told Reed to have Givens or Sonny call the police themselves, and though he made a report, the officer said

the matter would likely not be investigated because the police couldn’t pursue petty-theft cases over the high volume of violent crimes in Oakland.

Frustrated, Reed drove to the place Givens said Sonny could be found. Recognizing him from the photo taken at Custom Alloy, Reed pulled up next to Sonny on his usual street corner and asked if he had taken the copper. Sonny said he had

“He readily admitted to stealing our stuff,” Reed said. “He said that he was sorry it was going to cost us so much and that he would not steal from our trucks again!”Still frustrated by the police department’s lack of interest in the case, Reed sent an e-mail describing his saga to several listservs for Oakland business owners.

“[Sonny] was easy to find. He readily admitted to the theft. The police department says that they probably will not pursue it,” Reed said in the e-mail. “He knew that there is no consequence to this kind of theft! And the Oakland Police confirmed it.”

The e-mail reached about a thousand businesspeople, Reed said, many of whom complained about the police department’s reluctance to investigate. “It went all over North Oakland,” Reed said.

The correspondence reached the police department, and about 30 hours after the theft, an officer contacted Reed to tell him the department had decided to investigate the case.

“Normally, without identification of the guy, the report would just be filed,” said Lt. Yoell, adding that because the police are “overwhelmed and understaffed,” it is difficult to follow up on petty-theft cases.

But Reed’s dedication to solving the copper caper paid off. A week after the theft, the police, perhaps prodded by an angry public that had sent the department e-mails, arrested two men in the case. It seemed the case was finally over, but the mystery hasn’t been solved just yet – neither of the two arrested men were Sonny or Givens.