Bike theft is one of the most demoralising aspects of cycling. There is a real epidemic of bike theft in the UK. It is estimated a bicycle is stolen every minute and less than 5% of those are returned to their owners. There is a total of around 500,000 bike thefts a year – a figure that has doubled since the mid 1990s. (according to link) The Crime Victim survey (2000) suggested only 56% of bike thefts are actually reported to the police. Cyclists are more likely to have their bike stolen than motorists have their cars stolen.
However, some areas have been able to tackle the problem by directly targeting bike thieves.
Stolen bikes recovered from one house in Cambridge. (Didn’t the neighbours ever think something fishy was going on?)
25% of all crime in Cambridge is related to bike theft. Bike theft soared in Cambridge so police started sting operations using GPS devices to find where stolen bikes went. As a result bike theft fell 25% in 2011.
As a result of these sting operations, known as Operation Northwood, the major crackdown in bike theft and burglary led to 20 thieves being locked up for a total of more than 47 years after a year-long blitz.
It’s great to see the effort put in by the police has paid for itself. This kind of heightened conviction will act as a deterrent and prevent future crime. I only wish these schemes were rolled out across the country.
Note on GPS and Theft
One note about GPS. It can be useful for police to recover stolen bikes, but be careful about using GPS tools like Strava. This can show thieves where your best bike is kept. They could use this to target your house / shed and steal your bike. If you login to Srava and click on privacy settings, you can hide 100 metres around your house – so theives won’t be able to pin point exactly where you live. This option is not enabled by default, but should be. (hat tip Cycling Weekly)
Many stolen bikes never get reclaimed.
- Register model, make and frame number to increase your chance of getting it back if it’s stolen. (try Bike Register.com)
- Security mark it
- Use an ACPO-approved marking scheme.
Make sure the security mark:
- Is clearly visible, highlighting that the cycle is security coded
- Is secure and difficult for a thief to remove
- Includes a registration log book, proving ownership
Related
We reported to the police the fact that we strongly suspect someone is trying to steal our £1,600 child carrier bike but they didn’t want to know saying there is nothing they can do. We’ve seen this person snooping around our bike and we were able to confront him about it. Caught by surprise in his ‘reconnaissance’ mission, he apologized, came up with all sorts of explanations and left. The next day (Sunday) we suspect he was back knowing we were away (he’s well connected in the neighbourhood who feed him the comings and goings of neighbours), as the bike was fiddled around with but it’s so tricky to operate that he must have given up. Surely deterring thieves from striking again would also contribute to reducing bike theft? The police replied saying that there is nothing they can do although we took a photo of this person and know of his whereabouts. We were asked to notify them when we see the thief in action which is ludicrous because by the time they make it to the scene the thief would be well gone. We were also indirectly encouraged to confront the thief. So put ourselves and lives at risk to stop the theft – what if the thief was armed?!
The policing system is weak and not doing enough.