Frank Girardot, the crime guy and editor at Pasadena Star News, has another take on the metal scavengers — he interviewed the "pilot" of the mothership, for starters.  (Yes, it's the Whittier paper, but they're under the same ownership and this WILL appear in tomorrow's Star News).

As an aside, we think Girardot is making a big mistake by relying on Crimereports.com when he declares that only two residential theft reports were taken by the sheriffs in the past 30 days.  Hello, Altadena burglary wave?  Altadena Sheriff Capt. Steve McLean told the Altadena Town Council yesterday that that there were 12 burglaries during the month of July – and altho' the numbers are dropping down (there was only one reported last week), common sense tells you there have been more than two in thirty days. (Figures like this are why we learned early on that not everything makes it to Crimereports.com).

As ANOTHER aside, the earliest mention we can find of a "mothership" for metal scavengers was in this LA Times story from 1995.