Company officials stopped short of accusing strikers of the acts, but referred to the currently unapprehended perpetrators as “criminals.” It said that there have been at least 24 suspected incidents of sabotage over the past week in five states, including states where members of the Communications Workers of America and International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers have walked off their jobs to protest a lack of progress in negotiations for new labor agreements, according to a report yesterday by linkis.com/lightwaveonline.com.
“We will find out who’s behind these highly dangerous criminal acts and we will pursue criminal charges,” said Michael Mason, Verizon’s chief security officer. “These reckless perpetrators are risking the lives of countless Americans by cutting access to key lines of communications, especially to local police, fire and rescue personnel. If someone has an emergency and needs to contact local authorities, these malicious actions could prevent that from happening.”
The news site said Verizon has offered a $10,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and prosecution of anyone involved with the incidents, which include:
- Sliced fiber-optic cabling at a network facility box in New Jersey that cut services to customers and local emergency personnel, including police and fire departments.
- Sabotage in Massachusetts which cut off phone services for 16 hours.
- Severed fiber-optic and copper cables in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and New York that disrupted voice and Internet services.
Verizon put the number of customers affected by the incidents in the thousands, linkis.com/lightwaveonline.com reported.
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