Tuesday, November 21st, 2017 — According to a report today from the National Insurance Crime Bureau (NICB), in 2014, a total of 12,630 metal theft claims were processed. That number dropped by 23 percent to 9,699 in 2015 and dropped even more — 47 percent — in 2016 to 5,103. Compared with 2014, insured metal thefts were down a whopping 60 percent in 2016. During this three-year period, 28,040 insurance claims for the theft of copper, bronze, brass or aluminum were handled — 27,450 of them (98 percent) involving copper. When copper theft claims frequency is compared to the monthly average price of copper, there is a statistically-significant correlation between the two.