Louisa Kyles, wife of Rufus Kyles, the pastor at Evangelist Temple Church of God in Christ, walks past the enclosure where nine air-conditioning units were stolen from the Houston church. With a record-breaking heat wave sweeping the country, copper thieves, who get their supplies from pilfered air conditioners, are keeping police and sheriff's offices busy.

HOUSTON — For weeks this blazingly hot summer, the sanctuary inside Evangelist Temple Church of God in Christ here has been uncomfortably stuffy — too warm for Sunday services and seemingly hotter, one recent 94-degree evening, than that place where Bishop Rufus Kyles seeks to prevent his congregation from spending eternity.

Nine 5-ton, 8-ton and 10-ton air-conditioning units usually keep the church cool, but this indoor heat was not a matter for an air-conditioning specialist.

It was a matter for the police.

Early one morning last month, thieves drove up to the back of the church, gutted all nine industrial-size units and sped off. They caused roughly $60,000 in damage to get their hands on about $400 of scrap metal inside — the long coils of copper that serve as the arteries of air-conditioning units.

The Houston Police Department dusted the remaining bits and pieces for fingerprints, but no arrests have been made.

This summer, copper thieves have been keeping law enforcement officials busy throughout Texas and around the country. In Parker County, about an hour outside Dallas, seven churches have had their air-conditioning units damaged or stolen since late May, including Holy Redeemer Catholic Parish, where someone used a ladder to climb onto the roof and dismantle five of their eight units.

Last week in Lexington, Ky., where the police arrested two men for felony theft, the air conditioners were not at a church but at Mary Todd Elementary School.

In recent days and weeks, copper thieves have damaged or stolen heavy-duty air-conditioning units at the nonprofit Calusa Nature Center and Planetarium in Fort Myers, Fla.; the main post office in the Chicago suburb of Riverside, Ill.; Morningside Elementary School in Mobile, Ala.; and Shackelford Funeral Home in Adamsville, Tenn., forcing the relocation of one cancer victim’s funeral.

The 29-year-old man arrested in the Adamsville case is accused of taking a 97-pound coil and selling it to a scrap metal site, for $1.50 a pound.

“As a Christian community, of course, we have to maintain our Christian beliefs, and we believe that we should forgive,” said Kyles, pastor at Houston’s Evangelist Temple, which has been holding Sunday services in either their fellowship hall or a nearby Baptist church since the crime. “However, I do know the Bible says the law is for the lawless. I’m trying to, in my mind, understand the mind-set of the people who did it, because it’s the hottest time of the year. It’s like somebody’s got a vendetta or there’s an all-out attack on churches. It’s hard to imagine.”

While thefts of copper, platinum and other metals have long been a problem in many cities and towns, the focus on air-conditioning units during the record-breaking heat that has gripped much of the country this summer has turned what can seem a minor crime in mild temperatures into a major disruption.

Increase in crimes

Numerous law enforcement agencies said air-conditioner-related crimes were on the rise, forcing many departments to create or bolster special units that focus full-time on metal thefts. In Memphis, the police said there had been nearly 800 reports of air conditioners damaged or stolen this year, up from 130 in the same time period in 2005.

Officers in the Houston Police Department’s metal theft unit handle about 40 air-conditioner cases a month.

In Hillsborough County in west central Florida, the sheriff’s office usually has one investigator working metal theft cases, but this summer added five others to respond to a spate of air-conditioner crimes.

“We’ve seen drug dealers that will take an air-conditioner coil instead of money for drugs,” said Dillon Corr, a detective with the Hillsborough sheriff’s office.

The criminals responsible are most often not seasoned professionals, law enforcement officials say. Many are drug addicts or homeless men desperate for a couple of hundred dollars, and they tend to work sloppily and slowly. The investigation of the air-conditioner theft at Holy Redeemer in Texas has been aided by the bracelet that one of the culprits left behind on the rooftop.

Though some of the thieves are apprehended quickly, others are never caught. Law enforcement officials say there are often no witnesses, few leads and unidentifiable air-conditioner components that make tracing a sale nearly impossible. As a result, several cities and states have enacted laws increasing their oversight of scrap metal businesses and their customers. In Houston, it is illegal for anyone to sell any component of a central air-conditioning unit without a city permit or professional license. In addition, scrap metal dealers in the city are required to get customers’ thumbprints and to electronically report all of their transactions daily to the police, which monitors the data.

Paying the price

For the victims, the thefts leave people scrambling to cool their businesses and churches with fans while their permanent units are repaired or replaced. The crime’s total price tag — for installing new units, paying deductibles or damage not covered by insurance, securing replacement units in custom-made steel cages — can be tens of thousands of dollars.

Last summer, copper thieves caused more than $150,000 in damage to air-conditioner units in the Fort Worth school district. This summer, after 15 air-conditioner thefts, the damage was roughly $85,000.

The Rev. Michael Bill, owner of Bill Clair Family Mortuary in Houston, had to pay about $8,000 to replace one of his two air conditioners, after someone stole the copper coils from it in July. The scene of the crime was as unusual as it gets: in back of the red-brick mortuary, steps from a black hearse, his two air conditioners rest on concrete slabs on a patch of grass surrounded by headstones and burial markers.

No one is buried there; the markers and headstones are for display only. But Bill was outraged at the thieves’ lack of respect for the symbols of death, and for the weather.

“It’s mean in 120-degree heat, for someone to be going all around town everywhere stealing your air-conditioning,” Bill said. “That’s pretty cruel.”