Local & State Headlines

Farmers 'easy targets'

• Investigators say farmers make an easy target for thieves looking to make a quick robbery.

J.D. Sumner

LEESBURG — A Lee County farmer told police that someone had stolen $10,000 worth of metal wiring from his irrigation equipment, authorities said.

According to incident reports from the Lee County Sheriff’s Office, James Giese Usry told deputies that he noticed someone had tampered with irrigation equipment on his farm off of Georgia Highway 377.

After taking a closer look, Usry and Deputy Thomas Draper found that about 1,500 feet of insulated wiring had been removed from at least 10 towers on the unit, the report says. The value of the wire was listed at $10,000.

Chief Lee County Deputy Dennis Parker said that farmers are easy targets for thieves because of the remote location and expanse of farmland in Southwest Georgia.

“It’s not hard for someone to drive through a field in the middle of the night and make off with anything without being detected,” Parker said. “So, unfortunately, farmers are easy prey.”

And while wire theft from irrigation systems isn’t a rare occurrence, Parker pointed out that valuables on farms come in many shapes and sizes.

“There are a lot of things that are very valuable right now that farmers have on their land,” Parker said. “Any type of metals, or diesel or gasoline, are all big moneymakers for thieves.”

Ask Gill Pace. Just last month, he told Lee County deputies that someone had siphoned off 1,000 gallons of diesel fuel from a tank on his farm. With diesel prices nearing $4 a gallon, Parker said losing that much diesel would be an financial tragedy for a farmer.

With the price of metals and fuels soaring, Parker recommended area farmers remain vigilant. While these kinds of crimes are tough to prevent, he said, it often pays when landowners are able to give investigators even the tiniest bit of extra information.

“We may not be able to prevent it,” Parker said. “But if a farmer can come in an say, ‘I was in that field on Monday and again on Wednesday,’ then it makes it a lot easier to pinpoint when the crime happened and that could turn into an arrest.”

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