A 53-year-old Los Angeles man was arrested and booked on theft-related charges after Signal Hill police said surveillance video captured him using a wrench to unscrew the base bolts of a fire hydrant on the city's streets. Police identified the suspect as Jorge Beltran Carrillo, and said officers patrolling the area spotted him and took him into custody without incident.
The footage appeared to show the man using his parked car as a screen while he worked a wrench on the bolts at the hydrant's base, according to KTLA. The Oct. 23 incident is far from isolated: Signal Hill police said several hydrants had already been taken from the Southeast Los Angeles area in recent months, amid a growing countywide trend in hydrant thefts, as first detailed in reporting from the New York Post.
A County-Wide Scrap Metal Problem
Golden State Water Company, which owns the water infrastructure in the area and services the fire hydrants, has said the thefts have amounted to more than $1.2 million in losses — costs that are ultimately passed on to customers, the station's report notes. At least 302 fire hydrants have been stolen since the start of 2023 in several areas of the county, according to a Los Angeles Times article published in June 2024.
The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department separately reported 85 hydrants stolen from unincorporated areas of the county in 2024 alone, with another 14 taken from Lynwood, per the same account. Many of the thefts have clustered in Florence-Graham, Willowbrook, West Rancho Dominguez and eastern Gardena near the 110 Freeway, areas the utility and law enforcement officials have flagged as hot spots.
Why Hydrants Are a Target
Investigators believe the hydrants are being hauled off to recycling centers and sold for scrap metal, with the brass fittings inside especially in demand. The math helps explain why thieves keep coming back despite the risk: replacing a stolen hydrant can cost a water agency upwards of $4,500, even though its scrap value runs around $400, according to a case study published by the International City/County Management Association.
The consequences go beyond the utility's balance sheet. Missing hydrants can delay efforts to extinguish fires. Golden State Water has responded by welding some hydrants shut to block access to the bolts and installing locked steel covers that keep the fasteners from being unscrewed.
Task Force and Neighboring Warnings
Los Angeles County and Golden State Water have formed a task force that meets every two weeks and includes sheriff's officials from nearby stations, an effort the ICMA case study credits with helping drive thefts down and arrests up as awareness and hardware improvements take hold. Century Station deputies have also investigated the thefts.
The problem has spread enough that the Bell Police Department issued its own bulletin warning residents of similar hydrant theft crimes turning up in southeast Los Angeles. Bell police advised residents to contact local law enforcement if they see someone removing a hydrant without a Golden State Water Company vehicle present, a simple check meant to separate legitimate utility work from theft in progress.
