Landline phones at the East Los Angeles Sheriff's Station have been silent for nearly two months after thieves ripped out copper wiring.
7 On Your Side has been showing you how rampant copper theft has been impacting telephone landline service. One of the first people to tell us about this problem lost her phone service again.
Verizon customers throughout the Los Angeles County area reported an outage that affected their service, which the company said was caused by acts of vandalism.
Local leaders are calling on Gov. Gavin Newsom to crack down on copper wire theft. A bill sitting on his desk would tighten laws around buying and selling scrap metal.
When a communications cable is cut, it can be hundreds of fiber lines serving thousands of customers. Fixing it has been described as putting spaghetti back together.
Copper wire theft is plaguing neighborhoods across Los Angeles, leaving many in the dark and causing dangerous conditions.