Three twenty-something Twin Cities men plead guilty to causing outages to local electric, phone and television customers through senseless acts of vandalism. Their activities were nothing to joke about:
Law enforcement seized key-making equipment, computers, utility uniforms, badges, lock-picking tools, keys for U locks, an Xcel Energy credit card, radios, a U hospital pager, Northern States Power padlocks, Xcel Energy hard hats, padlocks from various businesses and much more from the mastermind of the operation.
From the Pioneer Press:
# A special investigative team made up of police, the FBI and Xcel Energy staff was created to look into a series of thefts, vandalisms and disruptions of power grids across the Twin Cities. It eventually involved as many as 10 jurisdictions.
# Unknown individuals had been cutting or disabling the locks to the “overhead throw” switches, which are used by emergency crews to cut power to areas. There were 27 incidents where these locks were tampered with and the switches thrown, killing power for hundreds or thousands of homes and businesses.
# Glennie said he met McCombs through online “urban exploring” Web sites. Urban exploring involves going into underground or off-limits areas. He met Walter through McCombs.
# Their criminal activity “accelerated a great deal” from early 2007 and “became almost like an addiction,” Glennie said. All three worked to defeat locks belonging to Xcel Energy, Qwest and Comcast, cutting service to customers.
# Glennie told a probation official that he had “always had an obsession to having access to things.”
# Walter, one of the co-defendants, told police after his arrest that the threesome would collect the locks like trophies, he said.
# On the night of the November incident, they had wanted to “mess with” another urban explorer who had said something bad about McCombs online. So they attempted to disrupt the phone service where the man lived.
Otherwise, the targets were random.
“This is really just a senseless, senseless act,” Vlieger said.
For his plea of guilty to damaging utility property, Glennie was sentenced to 90 days in jail. He will have to serve another year if he does not abide by the terms of his probation.
