MEDFORD, Ore – The SoHumane facility in Medford has been experiencing a chain of burglaries over the last six months and it’s beginning to put a financial strain on the non-profit.
“We started collecting bottles and cans to recycle back in 2020, and since then we’ve raised about $23,000 with those bottles and cans and we’ve had such an amazing response from the community,” said SoHumane Executive Director, Karen Evans. “But over about the last six months, we’ve started experiencing theft on the property and what they’re after are the bottles and cans.”
Evans says their cameras have caught criminals climbing fences, cutting fences and locks, and even breaking doors down to get the recyclables.
“People have said to me ‘put up a higher fence, put up barbed wire, do this, do that.’ But, it just seems like everything we do to prohibit them from stealing from us, they just find a way around it,” Evans said.
Evans says staff have actually seen the same person on video consistently breaking in and think they even know who is doing it. They believe it is someone who lives in the neighborhood nearby.
“We actually got some pretty good footage of the guy last night, he actually brought his dog with him which I thought was interesting,” Evans said. “And this week, on Friday night, is when they actually broke down the door of our maintenance manager’s shop and they damaged the door so badly that the whole structure of the door had to be rebuilt.”
By the Maintenance Manager’s estimate, whoever is breaking in has probably taken $2,000-$3,000 worth of bottles and cans.
“It’s been very frustrating for us because first of all, it’s beyond me that anyone would steal bottles and cans in the first place, but especially from a non-profit that is helping homeless animals,” Evans said. “So, it really kind of tells you about the character of the person who is actually doing the stealing.”
The Medford Police Department is currently working with SoHumane on the case.
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