Months after their service was knocked out by copper wire thieves, Twin Cities metro neighbors continue to report landline phone outages. Some rely solely on their landline and remain without service to call 911.

Representatives for phone carrier CenturyLink, in the company’s first interview with 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS on the issue, said the rate of thefts affecting their service has been “unprecedented.”

“It is absolutely unprecedented, and it’s growing,” said Tim White, CenturyLink’s Regional Vice President for engineering, construction and operations.

Instances of copper wire theft affecting CenturyLink in Minnesota were up 207% in 2024 compared to the year prior, and nearly 80% of incidents happened around November and December alone, the company reported.

“Incidents are still occurring in January and February, so that number continues to grow,” White said, likening the response effort to that of “dealing with a natural disaster.”

White was hesitant to discuss specifics in terms of the number of reported outages but said a single theft typically cuts service for ten to hundreds of landlines. In “more extreme cases,” thousands have been knocked out at once, a spokesperson added.

On Monday, a 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS crew met CenturyLink technicians at a manhole under repair following copper wire theft in Minneapolis.

Although thieves have targeted telephone poles and pedestals, White said cut wire from manholes have caused “the most recent significant, catastrophic kinds of impacts.”

Steven Freund said he and his neighbors in Minneapolis’ Cedar-Riverside neighborhood remained without landline service as of this report. It went down on Dec. 12, he said.

Asked how many outages remain from our initial reporting in December, White pointed to a continually growing number of theft reports.

“And in some cases, as we have completed one restoration, the criminals are attacking a different part of that same route. And so, those same set of customers can be impacted again. It’s very difficult to say, I can say that every day, additional customers are being restored,” White continued.

The Minnesota Public Utilities Commission has been critical of CenturyLink’s repair response time, reporting that the company cut its field crew workforce in half in recent years.

“We continually assess the kind of the needs of the business in terms of the number of technicians required,” White said in response.

“We also have brought in employees from other states as well to assist, because the volumes are so significant.”

CenturyLink has blamed the rise in thefts on a “dramatic rise in copper prices.” St. Paul Public Works has made similar statements about why copper wire theft from street lights has likely risen in recent years.

Dan Chason, head of corporate security for CenturyLink’s parent company Lumen Technologies, also joined the interview.

“You have to understand the criminal element is extremely different from anything I’ve dealt with in my 43 years of doing this,” he said.

“We had an aerial cut that they were repairing, and on the other end, around the curve — while they’re repairing the cut, [thieves are] cutting it again,” Chason continued.

“It’s just a brazen, you know, ‘Katy bar the door,’ I’m going to get this copper.”

Asked if there’s anything additional the company is doing, or can do to protect against repeat theft, Chason said, “Any opportunity we have to harden the target, whether that’s through engineer controls or the security tools — whatever we use to harden that target, we use every tool in our tool chest, but that’s not applicable in every instance.”

Chason also pointed to the “manhole issue” as a “more difficult” repair job.

For perspective, the crew working on the Minneapolis manhole visited by 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS on Monday morning said they wouldn’t be able to finish the repair job by the end of the workday.

Chason said the company’s primary strategy to slow thefts is coordination with local police.

“That is our mentality,” he said.

“We are well into a number of investigations that are yielding fruit, and it is a snowball effect. You make that first arrest and then the second, and then the third. It ends up being 20 and 30, and that’s our goal,” he continued.

“You want this mess to stop. That’s how you stop it.”

As of this report, a St. Paul Police spokesperson said the department made eight arrests related to copper wire theft from private properties and utility companies in the last year.

Officers made another 13 arrests related to theft from city street lights, they added.

Minneapolis Police had not provided updated statistics as of this report. In early January, the department reported an investigation into at least one incident from mid-December in which copper wires were stolen from a manhole on 22nd Avenue South.