Thieves continue to gut public street light poles and make off with their precious copper innards, leaving neighborhoods eerily darkened in Minneapolis and St. Paul. Minneapolis is throwing $1 million of contingency funding at the problem,

MINNEAPOLIS — City leaders are directing $1 million from Minneapolis' contingency funds to combat a growing problem: widespread streetlight outages caused by copper wire theft. Mayor Jacob Frey and other city officials announced the funding Thursday, aiming to accelerate repairs on an estimated 450 lights currently out across the city.

The City of Minneapolis is putting $1 million into a program to accelerate fixing streetlights in the city damaged by copper thieves.