41–50 of 121 posts
It was an old bonded aluminum frame Trek, it squeaked when you bore down on it but it was upgraded and tweaked just the way I like it. I haven't felt the same about cycling since.
I wish bike manufacturers would start including GPS devices into the frames of high-end bikes. The devices would need some access to insert SIMs and charge them and then it should act as a deterrent.
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 this is an amazing story. The only bike theft I've ever heard of where the police actually did something. It does reconfirm just how little they care about bike theft though - literally all they had to do was email the thief and he would come to them! But no even that is too much work.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
One of the hallmarks of a justice system is the presence of a neutral judge and a defense attorney. Mob violence is most certainly not just.
I know of someone who, during the pandemic, noticed a certain homeless encampment that regularly had $8K bikes lying around. Because a homeless person would certainly possess a six-month-old carbon World Cup race bike. The person went to the camp regularly for a while, with a baseball bat, and retrieved bikes. They had 5 in the garage at one point. Doing so was more hassle, though, once they were in possession, than…
A long time ago I had a bicycle stolen. I had registered the bike with the city as "required" had filled out a police report with license number and serial number. Found the bike locked up in town on a Friday night. Flagged down a police officer and told him about the bicycle theft, police report and had a copy of the paperwork with all the relevant info. Cops reply: I can't get a locksmith out until Monday. Went hom…
A long time ago I had a bicycle stolen. I had registered the bike with the city as "required" had filled out a police report with license number and serial number. Found the bike locked up in town on a Friday night. Flagged down a police officer and told him about the bicycle theft, police report and had a copy of the paperwork with all the relevant info. Cops reply: I can't get a locksmith out until Monday. Went hom…
So i reported it stolen, they facepalmed and said they took it off a campus bike rack (cutting the lock), and sold it, with others, at a campus auction.
I found it locked up at the engineering library some time later, but it was beat to shit by the person who had bought it, whereas i'd taken care of it (it was 15ish years old when stolen) like something expensive that i couldn't even afford when grandparents bought it for me.
Total goofup all around.
A long time ago I had a bicycle stolen. I had registered the bike with the city as "required" had filled out a police report with license number and serial number. Found the bike locked up in town on a Friday night. Flagged down a police officer and told him about the bicycle theft, police report and had a copy of the paperwork with all the relevant info. Cops reply: I can't get a locksmith out until Monday. Went hom…
around 1996 I had my bike, locked up on campus at my University, stolen from a campus bike rack, by the campus police, in essentially a new-employee fuckup. My bike was in the database, labelled, serial number registered. So i reported it stolen, they facepalmed and said they took it off a campus bike rack (cutting the lock), and sold it, with others, at a campus auction. I found it locked up at the engineering libra…
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
If the bike is valuable enough to be worth the effort, it will eventually be listed for sale by the police, usually through an "unclaimed property" continuous auction system. If the bike doesn't clear whatever value/revenue threshold that is, it'll be scrapped or donated and that's that, or sometimes it'll end up bundled with a bunch of other low value things as a single auction item.
If your bike is valuable enough to generate revenue greater than the expense of auction logitics and is stolen in the US, pay attention to police auctions in your general area and it's likely to turn up. Sometimes they'll skip the sale and give it to you if you have documentation proving that it's yours, sometimes they want you to point them to the police report you filed saying it was stolen. Sometimes they'll lol and you have to pay up anyway.
Glad this had a happy ending. I'm still torn up about my own bike, stolen in broad daylight. It was my fault - it wasn't locked up. It was an old bonded aluminum frame Trek, it squeaked when you bore down on it but it was upgraded and tweaked just the way I like it. I haven't felt the same about cycling since.
Pretty sure it's still the thief's fault. (I dunno, maybe you were in Amsterdam at the time.)