Police in one Denver metro area city are hoping residents can help them catch copper criminals in the act

As a property maintenance worker at her Commerce City apartment complex, Michelle Guzman has an eye for detecting when things may not look right.

"This is where one of the backflows for one of the sprinkler systems is here at the building," said Guzman, pointing to concrete with piping that looks like it's been sawed off.

"As we were cleaning around the property, we noticed that this had been cut off. The cage had been torn off, thrown to the side and everything," she said.

Two of her apartment's copper backflow preventer systems were stripped, less than three weeks apart.

"It's disheartening," said Guzman. "I'm noticing everybody around on the chats and stuff on Facebook saying how they're missing copper and how they're taking things out of their yard."

Commerce City police are now sounding the alarm about a recent increase in copper-related thefts. They shared surveillance video and photos of the aftermath after someone, or multiple people tampered with several electrical boxes throughout the city in April.

"We had 19 CenturyLink-owned electrical boxes that were all tampered with. All the copper wiring was stripped and CenturyLink said it was approximately $25,000 worth of damage to the boxes themselves," said Joanna Small, Public Information Officer with the Commerce City Police Department.

One of those boxes was still being fixed by a CenturyLink employee on Monday afternoon. Police say these incidents happened on the 9600 block of Dallas Street, the 9600 block of East 97th Avenue, the 9800 block of East 102nd Avenue, and 6030 East 50th Avenue. CBS Colorado spoke off camera to employees of one business along Dallas Street who say they lost internet connection because of the theft.

"CenturyLink tries to get people out there to repair it as quickly as possible but that's obviously hard on their staffing," said Small.

Police now hope residents can help catch these copper criminals in the act.

"Especially around refrigeration units, sprinkler systems, any commercial structures. If they see people cutting through fencing, we need you to call 911 immediately," said Small. "Our response time is just minutes, but if we don't know about it until the next morning, it's really hard to then go back and try to find the people responsible for this.

They hope by encouraging the community to be more vigilant, thefts like these can be stopped before they continue to come at a cost to residents.

"It's always a thought in the back of your mind, of how much more of an expense, because of people's negligence. it's going to cost you in the end," said Guzman.