GULFPORT, Miss. (WLOX) - Copper thieves stripped every light pole of its wiring at Clower-Thornton Nature Park off Railroad Street in Gulfport. The damage amounts to thousands of dollars and will eat up a fourth of one city department’s maintenance budget for FY 2026.

Gulfport’s Leisure Services assistant director Billy Lehman described the crime as “crazy.”

“It’s about $27,000 to get [the wiring] replaced,” he told WLOX News. “The amount of work it would take to burn [the plastic casing] off to get the copper out ... it’s not even a lot of copper.”

The City of Gulfport set the leisure service department’s maintenance budget for the current fiscal year at $100,000. Replacing the wiring would eat up more than a quarter of it. That’s why the city is contracting with Mississippi Power for

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