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My bike was stolen (2017)

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11–20 of 121 posts

Re: My bike was stolen (2017)

#11
post #3

I could not even imagine the police getting off their butts to do anything about a stolen bike, much less going along with a regular person's investigation. Great work, I wish more police were willing to actually do things when members of the public take the initiative

Yeah here in Germany you would be laughed out of the police station or the police would get aggressive with you and accuse you of committing a crime

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-fn0yCdqHg

Apparently you might get lucky.

Re: My bike was stolen (2017)

#14

I had the same bike stolen twice and was able to find it on Facebook marketplace both times. The key is to file a police report and make sure you have the serial number of the bike. Without these, the police will not help. Once you find your bike, message the person, negotiate, set-up a meet up, and then get the police involved. Although we caught the guys selling the stolen bikes red-handed, the police couldn’t do a…

So the police didn't do any detective work, didn't help with the sting operation, and they didn't punish the thief. It seems like it'd be more fruitful to get a few of your friends and solve the problem yourself. It's not like the thief is going to go to the cops.

Re: My bike was stolen (2017)

#16
post #5

Quoted post unavailable.

They seemed pretty helpful in this case. If they had said they were on it, it would have discouraged him from taking initiative- and they would probably fail 99% of the time retrieving a stolen bike- they often get shipped out-of-state in batches by pros.

Re: My bike was stolen (2017)

#18
post #6
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah here in Germany you would be laughed out of the police station or the police would get aggressive with you and accuse you of committing a crime

Ummm no? Two weeks ago I saw a guy trying to steal a bike and called the police. Three police cars arrived within 3 minutes and they tried to find him for at least 30 minutes based on my description.

Ummm no is randomly sassy.

Re: My bike was stolen (2017)

#20
post #5

Quoted post unavailable.

Consider the premise that the primary role of law enforcement is not to prevent crime, but to avoid vigilante justice. In that case, it is perfectly logical to ignore crimes with low probability of identifying the criminal and (relatively) low cost to the victim. If the perpetrator is exposed, it's now in the interest of law enforcement to step in and avoid a (potentially escalating) conflict between victim and perpetrator.
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