Electricity is expensive, but this item from Friday's police blotter about an incident in White Marsh still surprised me:

Burglary/arrest A man, 32, was arrested Tuesday and accused of using electricity from a neighbor's house in the first block of Glasshouse Garth to power his computer. When Stephen Rooker was arrested about 2:40 p.m. by police responding to the complaint, he was powering his computer through an electrical cord plugged into his neighbor's exterior outlet, police said. Rooker was charged with fourth-degree burglary, theft of electrical service and trespassing.

Before I make a joke about people who live in Glasshouses, Dan Thanh sez much more elaborate versions of this electrical theft happens all the time --- and she knows, because she wrote a story about it in 2001. Here's an excerpt from that story:

"To stop them, Baltimore Gas and Electric Co.'s power police - known more politely as revenue protection investigators - patrol the metro area in search of their elusive and often stubborn adversaries who are young, old, male, female, rich and poor.

... BGE estimates that it loses millions of dollars a year to theft, but the company said it can't determine the exact amount. Some theft is never discovered, BGE said, and it's difficult to separate how much is stolen from how much is never paid for.

    There are also no statistics on how many people die or get severely burned from electricity theft - after all, such activity is not the first thing injured parties volunteer at hospitals. But a good clue for investigators that someone was probably hurt in a theft attempt are scorch marks around a meter. Fatalities can occur from jolts as low as 24 volts. Home meters typically carry a load of about 240 volts."

All this reminds me of an interesting etiquette/ethical question about electrical grazing rights: