They caught one, they need to give him the maximum sentence possible.

Bury me under a big pile of rocks and call it a day. Good enough for the ancients, good enough for me.

This has been going on for quite some time, and by no means just in Florida.

What I fail to understand is how someone could show up with, say, a couple of hundred cemetery vases with no questioned asked. Or maybe just rudimentary questions:

"Where did you get all these vases?"

"Uh...I found them."

"Oh, all right, bring 'em on in."

Is zombo.com headquartered in Florida now?

Stay classy, Fla.

Monuments and markers should never be made from metal. Not just a matter of theft, but come time of war they tend to be turned into canons.

The government around here hires young-looking people to go into bars and restaurants to see if they get "carded" when they buy a drink, and issue citations if not. My son's place got busted by one of these and as a penalty couldn't sell alcohol for a week, That hurt.

But they won't hire some scuzzy homeless-looking guy to do the same with the scrap dealers.

There's signs in the cemeteries around these parts indicating they are "under 24 hours video surveillance"
Even those little family ones way out in the sticks.

What a world we live in.

It isn't just Florida, this has been going on all over the country. In my town here, the tweakers have been swiping the plaques off of the County Veterans Memorial every few months just like clockwork.  In WW2 this town lost over 120 young men to the Nazis and the Japanese, Korean War about 30, and Vietnam something like 40; The Gulf war about a dozen; and Afghanistan maybe 6 or 8 names were on those plaques last time I went there to take a walk and roast a doob in my best friend's oldest Brother's honor.

The thieves aren't afraid of doing $20 thou worth of damage in their efforts to swipe the bronze that they can sell for about $100. They caught a couple of Tweakers last summer with a whole pickup truck full of those vases that they'd swiped out of the oldest Cemetery in the county.

Scrappers will buy anything as long as it can be resold in a hurry. Brass, Bronze and Copper go very quickly. They have no farking shame.

Between these dudes and the asshats that swipe the flowers off of graves and then sell them at roadside stands near the cemetery,  I'm glad my kids and wife know my wishes: my body is to be cremated and the ashes sent to the IRS.  I figure they owned the majority share of me during my adult wage-earning years, so they ought to have first dibs on whatever is left over.

tillerman35: Between these dudes and the asshats that swipe the flowers off of graves and then sell them at roadside stands near the cemetery,  I'm glad my kids and wife know my wishes: my body is to be cremated and the ashes sent to the IRS.  I figure they owned the majority share of me during my adult wage-earning years, so they ought to have first dibs on whatever is left over.

Dude, contact your local teaching hospital and get into their "donated body" program. Your loved ones won't be bothered with any of that. You'll be off getting shot at or crashing into cars before they get the wake started...and without that big bill, they can have a real good time saluting you.

Testify!  I've seen a lot of grave markers with missing vases at cemeteries in Miami.  Kinda sad when you just want to leave a bunch of flowers and there's no vase to hold them.  Drink cups from Pollo Tropical just don't cut it.  :(

hoyt clagwell: Testify!  I've seen a lot of grave markers with missing vases at cemeteries in Miami.  Kinda sad when you just want to leave a bunch of flowers and there's no vase to hold them.  Drink cups from Pollo Tropical just don't cut it.  :(

For my mom's birthday I was actually in town (well, two days late, but classes) and able put some on her grave, and it was either 'ugly plastic vase' for $4 plus $6 for tulips, or small bouquet in a mason jar with a ribbon tied around it for $10. Mom would have gotten a kick out of the jar, so that's what I got. We'll just pretend I didn't see the 'no glass' sign (it was in a box anyway).