Vandals Knock Out Cable On Thanksgiving In Brooklyn And Queens

FOREST HILLS, QUEENS -- Thousands of Spectrum customers were forced to spend Thanksgiving without TV, internet or phone services after cables were vandalized overnight in Brooklyn and Queens.

Now Spectrum is offering a $50,000 reward for information leading to "the arrest and conviction of those responsible for criminally vandalizing Spectrum's cable network," said the company's New York City spokesman John Bonomo.

Bonomo said the fiber optic cables were cut in "coordinated acts of vandalism" that affected TV, internet and phone services for customers in Central Queens and south and central Brooklyn.

"We have crews on site at the locations, and appreciate our customers' patience as we work to restore services as quickly as possible," he said.

But some customers' patience is wearing thin with the company.

Forest Hills resident Barbara Glick, who awoke early Thursday morning to find her services had gone out, said she's grown frustrated with Spectrum, whose service interruptions have grown more frequent.

"It was 1 a.m. on Thursday morning, and I had gotten up to look on my phone and and I noticed there was no wifi," Glick said. "The first thing that came to my mind was, 'They did it again.'"

She was among a handful of disgruntled Spectrum customers to air their frustrations with the company on a Forest Hills Facebook group. Several complained the cable outage interrupted their Thanksgiving by causing them to miss out on watching the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade and NFL games.

"Let's just say I didn't sleep much that night, because I was angry," Glick said.

Bonomo blamed the vandalization acts on angry union employees from Local 3 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers.

A Spectrum employee was arrested in June for allegedly cutting cables that put around 60,000 New Yorkers out of power, but the charges were later dropped, The New York Post reported.

"In the three years before Local 3 began its illegal strike on March 28, there were a total of four incidents of vandalism of our network in New York City," Bonomo said.

He claimed the networks has seen more than 130 acts of vandalism since the strike began. As a result, tens of thousands of New York residents, businesses, schools, hospitals and government agencies have lost service, Bonomo said.

Local 3 union representatives did not immediately return requests for comment.

"Our technicians have responded heroically to this all-out assault on our network and our customers," Bonomo said.

But Glick doesn't feel the network has done enough to correct the vandalism, which she felt has become a frequent occurrence.

"This has been going on for a couple years now from what I gather," she said. "They always seem to do it on holidays because, yes, this is where they can be the most effective."

She claimed a similar vandalism knocked her power out on July 4. Both times, Glick said Spectrum offered her $2 credits for the outages.

Glick wasn't the only one to express her anger at the Thanksgiving Day outages. Several customers took to twitter to vent.

Bonomo urged anyone with information about the suspected vandalizations to call the company's confidential tip line at 800-308-9426.