Stop in the name of the loo!

Subject:	Stop in the name of the loo!
Date:	Sun, 31 Jan 2010 21:23:20 -0800 (PST)

It seems that the University of California, Berkeley is experiencing a
wave of plumbing mutilations. Aliens beam down in the night and
remove the "flushometers" with surgical precision.
http://www.dailycal.org/article/107996/ucpd_hopes_to_flush_out_bathroom_burglar

Seriously, the police are treating it as theft, as opposed to, say, a
student prank. Commercial-grade plumbing is expensive and I'd guess
they're pretty interchangeable, so maybe there's a black market in
stolen toilet controllers, down the hall past the air bags and
catalytic converters and to your left, can't miss it.

Another theory says they're being sold for scrap (guesstimated value
$2 each), though the neatness of the job seems incongruous with my
image of that sort of crime, which runs more toward addicts hacking
the pipes and wiring out of abandoned buildings and construction
sites.

Is this happening elsewhere too?

--Joe