MetalTheft.Net's Interview Series

Exclusive interviews with scholars and other professionals on metal theft.

Mick Swindells
April 2013, Volume 3, Number 1

Michael (Mick) Swindells is a retired UK Police Officer who served 30 years with Lancashire Constabulary. He joined the Police Dog Section in 1979 and has trained dogs in Explosive, Narcotic and Human Remains detection. In 1986, he was promoted to Sergeant and finished his career in 2005 at the rank of Temporary Inspector. He is a Home Office Approved Police Dog Instructor. Since 2007, Mick has been the sole search dog provider for the Independent Commission for the Location of Victim Remains (ICLVR) in Ireland, which is an independent team set up as part of the Good Friday Agreement to locate the victims of the IRA during the “troubles” of the 1970’s- 1990’s. In 2012, Mick was the innovator of the Forensic Marker Detection dog, a field of dog training aimed specifically at combating metal theft and locating forensic markers in other crime scene scenarios.
Click here for full interview PDF.

Mark Harrison
December 2012, Volume 2, Number 3

Mark Harrison is National Policing & Crime Advisor to English Heritage, the English public agency with responsibility for protecting the UK's heritage assets, and he manages their Heritage Crime Programme. Following a successful career in the Metropolitan and Kent police forces, during which he studied for a degree in Policing and Crime Management, Mark joined English Heritage in 2010, in order to lead the fight against heritage crime, including metal theft from heritage assets. Mark also has a significant track record in archaeology and is an Honorary Research Fellow in Classical and Archaeological Studies at the University of Kent, a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London, a member of the Trafficking Culture project at the University of Glasgow, and Director of the Timescapes Kent, a community interest group dedicated to the history and archaeology of the Whistable area, in the south of England.
Click here for full interview PDF.

Carl Zimring, Ph.D.
August 2012, Volume 2, Number 2

Carl Zimring is Associate Professor of Sustainability Studies at the Pratt Institute. He is the author of Cash for Your Trash: Scrap Recycling in America (2005) and general editor of The Encyclopedia of Consumption and Waste: The Social Science of Garbage (2012).
Click here for full interview PDF.

Brian Ashby, Ben Kolak, and Courtney Prokopas, Co-Directors of Scrappers
April 2012, Volume 2, Number 1

The documentary film Scrappers, co-directed by Brian Ashby, Ben Kolak, and Courtney Prokopas, is a vérité portrait of Oscar and Otis, two metal scavengers who “search for a living with brains, brawn and battered pickup trucks.” The film encompasses several emerging themes bearing on contemporary crime, media, and culture, including the growing popularity of an American post-industrial aesthetic, the blurring distinction between film—particularly documentary—and social science, and the recent trend of metal theft, which has risen as one of the most prevalent property crimes in the first decade of the 21st century. This interview with the co-directors elaborates on these themes. The interview also appears, with photos, in a forthcoming issue of Crime, Media, Culture.
Click here for full interview PDF.

Click on the image to the right to see the trailer, rent the movie, or own it.
Picture
Scrappers co-directors Brian Ashby, Courtney Prokopas, and Ben Kolak.

Jeff Ferrell, Ph.D.
December 2011, Volume 1, Number 3

Jeff Ferrell is currently Professor of Sociology at Texas Christian University, USA, and Visiting Professor of Criminology at the University of Kent, UK. He is the author of the books Crimes of Style, Tearing Down the Streets, Empire of Scrounge, and, with Keith Hayward and Jock Young, Cultural Criminology: An Invitation, winner of the 2009 Distinguished Book Award from the American Society of Criminology’s Division of International Criminology. He is also the co-editor of the books Cultural Criminology, Ethnography at the Edge, Making Trouble, Cultural Criminology Unleashed, and Cultural Criminology: Theories of Crime. Jeff Ferrell is the founding and current editor of the New York University Press book series Alternative Criminology, and one of the founding editors of the journal Crime, Media, Culture: An International Journal, winner of the Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers’ 2006 Charlesworth Award for Best New Journal. In 1998 he received the Critical Criminologist of the Year Award from the Division of Critical Criminology of the American Society of Criminology.
He also hosts the Empire of Scrounge website. 
Click here for full interview PDF.

Aiden Sidebottom
August 2011, Volume 1, Number 2

Aiden Sidebottom is a Ph.D. candidate at the UCL Jill Dando Institute of Security and Crime Science at University College London, England and lead author of the recent article "Theft in Price-Volatile Markets: On the Relationship between Copper Price and Copper Theft" published in the latest issue of the Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency.
Click here for full interview PDF.

Brandon Kooi, Ph.D. 
April 2011, Volume 1, Number 1

Brandon Kooi is the author of Scrap Metal Theft (Guide #58), published by the Center for Problem-Oriented Policing. He is an associate professor and director of the criminal justice program at Aurora University in Aurora, Illinois and has been a private security consultant/executive, criminal investigator, law clerk, and youth crisis interventionist. He trained police chiefs and executives across Wisconsin at the Wisconsin Problem-Oriented Leadership Institute for Chief Executives (POLICE). Kooi’s book, Policing Public Transportation, appears with LFB Scholarly Publishing. His research papers have been published in the Journal of Criminal Justice Education, Journal of Security Education, Journal of Applied Security Research, Policing: An International Journal of Police Strategies & Management, Police Science and Management, and Criminal Justice Studies. 
Click here for full interview PDF.