Amid the torrent of legislation that just poured through the General Assembly, the glint of one obscure bill caught my eye.

It’s called the Copper Theft Prevention Act. At first, I thought it might be an attempt to prevent the pilfering of pennies at a time when every cent counts. As it turns out, that’s not what the bill aims to do. Nonetheless, it is a sign of the times.

Sen. Elizabeth A. Crowley, D-Central Falls, introduced the bill, now pending in the House, in an attempt to clamp down on the theft of copper pipes. With unemployment spiking, Rhode Island is seeing an increase in copper thefts from abandoned homes, especially in cities such as Providence, Pawtucket and Central Falls that have had a lot of foreclosures, she said.

“Many of the abandoned houses in the Blackstone Valley and the Providence area are vandalized,” Crowley said. “Copper piping is stolen from houses, and they go further than that. They even steal the wiring with copper in it. They steal furnaces.”

Crowley said, “It tells me there are many, many people who are desperate for income. I think it’s getting worse, not better, especially in the depressed parts of Rhode Island. Central Falls, parts of Pawtucket and Providence have more than 12 percent unemployment, and the median income is less than $20,000.”

Of course, it could be worse. Crowley’s bill reminded me of scenes from a nonfiction book about West Baltimore called The Corner: A Year in the Life of an Inner-City Neighborhood. The book is by Edward Burns and David Simon, creator of The Wire, an HBO series which has to be the best TV show I’ve seen.

At one point in the book, two men need money to feed their drug habits, so they steal copper pipes from the basement of a row house occupied by other addicts. “They cut out that good No. 1 copper as quietly as they could,” it says, describing how a woman upstairs began yelling that there was no water in the tap just as the two men bolted from the basement with their haul.

The book describes the scope of such copper “capers,” saying, “Uptown in Harlem Park, the good Baptists woke up one day to find it raining in the house of the Lord. And why not? The roof flashing was quality copper,” and “in Union Square, someone was picking up cast-iron manhole covers.”

“Behold, the ants. Alone and apart, they seem of little consequence,” the book says. “But by the dozens and hundreds, even the smallest insects can move mountains. The United Iron and Metal Company pays cash, no questions asked, as the wealth of the neighborhoods surrounding it — copper piping, aluminum roof flashing, cast-iron tubs, steel boilerplates — is carried off and melted down.”

We haven’t reached that kind of meltdown here. But times are tough, and Crowley is trying to make it tougher for thieves to sell stolen copper. Her bill would require metals recyclers to be licensed by the attorney general’s office, and recyclers would have to provide local police chiefs with weekly reports about transactions involving copper, bronze and aluminum. The records would have to include the name, address and date of birth of each person selling such metals.

The Senate passed the bill, but Crowley doubts it will pass the House and become law this year. She said scrap metal companies have concerns, and there are questions about enforcement. Let’s hope the bill doesn’t get scrapped altogether.

Meanwhile, maybe a drop in prices will deter thefts. On Wednesday, Bloomberg.com reported falling copper prices and quoted John Gross, publisher of the Copper Journal and president of J-E Gross & Co. in Newport, as saying, “Copper has lost steam.”

efitzpat@projo.com