All over America, bare poles stand empty while their missing street signs hang in bedrooms and living rooms as decorations. Visit a college town and it’s even worse. For fun, sport or from simple boredom people are swiping signs at a higher rate than ever before. And if the street has an amusing or interesting name like Corona Street, Rolling Rock Drive or Ragged Ass Road, the sign’s a goner for sure.

The method of stealing street signs varies (but there’s usually some sort of alcohol consumption involved). Some thieves use wrenches or other tools to steal metal signs. With fiberglass signs, they just jump up and rip the signs down with their bare hands.

At first, stealing a street sign might just seem like a prank. But stealing signs can have serious consequences. The theft of a street sign is definitely a crime and can cause problems for emergency responders. If response teams have to drive to an area where signs are missing, they can’t respond as quickly or as effectively as possible.

Each city has different laws for stealing street signs or for owning a stolen sign. Street signs are considered city property and punishment for theft can include anything from a ticket to jail time. However, if the sign theft leads to an injury, then the thief may be brought up on criminal charges.

Replacing street signs is also expensive an inconvenient for the city – costing taxpayers thousands. Not only do they pay for the replacement sign, but also for the time and labor to install it.

Cities are always looking for ways to prevent street sign theft. Here are a few ideas.

• Use aluminum signs. Metal signs are stronger than fiberglass or plastic signs, making them more difficult to tear down without the use of tools.
• Invest in tamper-proof sign mounting hardware. Specially shaped nuts and bolts require a special tool and cannot be removed with a standard wrench or screwdriver.
• Tag the street signs with a tamper-evident asset tag.  A tag with the city information on it will help get the signs returned to the city and make prosecution of the thief easier.

Seton offers a variety of street sign theft-prevention items including Tamper-Proof Nuts and Bolts and Tamper-Evident Asset Tags. And for those would-be thieves out there, Seton has Street Signs that you can customize with any name or wording you want – no need to steal them!

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