One year ago, Congress defunded public media. Now that we're 100% community funded, please become a sustaining member or increase your existing membership today.
Phone lines restored at East LA Sheriff’s Station after 2-month outage due to copper wire theft
The phone lines at the East LA Sheriff’s Station are back up after more than two months of outages caused by copper wire theft.
(
Jackie Ramirez
/
Boyle Heights Beat
)
The phone lines at the East L.A. Sheriff’s Station are back up after more than two months of outages caused by copper wire theft.
The update comes just one week after Boyle Heights Beat reported on the issue, and residents raised concerns at a Maravilla Community Advisory Committee (MCAC) meeting on April 7 about difficulty reaching the station by phone for non-emergencies.
According to the East L.A. Sheriff’s Station, service was restored on Thursday, April 23. By Friday, all dispatchers were back working in the station after temporarily operating out of an off-site communications trailer connected via satellite.
“This was made possible due to the concerted efforts of the East Los Angeles Sheriff Station Captains Hinchman and Kusayanagi, AT&T, and our Communications & Fleet Management Bureau,” the station said in a statement to the Beat.
The station also thanked Assemblymember Jessica Caloza’s office and community stakeholders who contacted AT&T to express urgency.
Sheriff’s officials previously said they had called Caloza’s office to help speed up repairs by communicating with AT&T.
What went wrong
According to Sgt. Michael Mileski, the outage was caused by an incident on Feb. 13, where several thousand dollars’ worth of copper wiring was stolen from an electrical vault near the station. Fiber optic cables were damaged in the process, which affected a significant portion of the Eastern Avenue corridor in Boyle Heights and East L.A., disrupting phone lines for 100,000 residents for five days, Mileski said.
AT&T said in a statement that copper cable outages generally take five times longer to repair on average than fiber outages.
Sponsored message
Copper wire theft has plagued the Eastside in recent years, leaving communities in the dark and disabling public facilities.
LA Documenter Alex Medina contributed reporting for this story. LA Documenters trains and pays LA residents to take notes at local government meetings around Los Angeles. You can find meeting notes and audio at losangeles.documenters.org
The story Phone lines restored at East LA Sheriff’s Station after 2-month outage due to copper wire theft appeared first on LA Local.
One year ago, Congress voted to defund public media, eliminating a critical $1.7 million from our budget every year going forward. But they couldn’t silence us, and we’re not going anywhere. LAist is now 100% community funded and that means we’re taking our future into our own hands and turning to you to keep local reporting strong.
You come to LAist because you want independent reporting and trustworthy local information. Our nonprofit newsroom doesn’t answer to shareholders looking to turn a profit. Instead, we answer to you and our communities. We are free to follow facts wherever they lead and to hold power to account without fear or favor. Our only loyalty is to our readers and listeners and our mission: to inform, engage, and strengthen Southern California’s communities.
If this story helped you, please become a monthly member today to help sustain this mission. It just takes 1 minute to donate below.
You come to LAist because you want independent reporting and trustworthy local information. Our nonprofit newsroom doesn’t answer to shareholders looking to turn a profit. Instead, we answer to you and our communities. We are free to follow facts wherever they lead and to hold power to account without fear or favor. Our only loyalty is to our readers and listeners and our mission: to inform, engage, and strengthen Southern California’s communities.
If this story helped you, please become a monthly member today to help sustain this mission. It just takes 1 minute to donate below.
Senior Vice President News, Editor in Chief
