Thieves at the gate

Returning to her brownstone in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn, after a long weekend out of town, Diane Raimondo was peeved to find the front gate left open. But as Ms. Raimondo approached her house, she realized that the heart-shaped iron gate wasn’t open, but gone altogether. Someone had yanked the 60-pound gate right off the metal fence that fronted the house and carted it away.

Thievery at the Gates

Ms. Raimondo’s brownstone, which in a particular bit of urban irony is located on Gates Avenue, was one of several Clinton Hill homes hit by gate thieves during June. Around the corner on Cambridge Place, Cathy Wassylenko discovered that the gate in front of her white stucco row house had been stolen in the middle of the day.

The question, of course, is why anyone would bother carting off such a heavy item. The most common theory is that someone is selling the gates to local scrap metal yards. Thanks to a recent surge in the price of scrap metal, thieves around the country are looking for excess material, and everything from fire hydrants to remnants at construction sites is fair game.