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Where do stolen bikes go?

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Re: Where do stolen bikes go?

#181

Post by dclowd9901 »

convolvatron wrote: post #143
agumonkey wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True but it requires heavy tooling and more time. Most robbers want cheap shots.

this is patently not true. maybe titanium is gummy enough to give one trouble? but any steel that isn't brittle enough to shatter when you look at it is going to be trivial to cut with an abrasive disk and a battery powered grinder. if the chain is 1/2" instead of 1/4", it will take an extra minute maybe.

And, frankly, who’s going to stop a guy with an angle grinder from stealing a bike that isn’t theirs?

Re: Where do stolen bikes go?

#182

Post by dclowd9901 »

zdragnar wrote: post #171
yodsanklai wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is scandalous. I wonder if you could somehow sue the police for not doing their job, or report the guy who refused to investigate.

There seems to be some silly misconception that police sit around twiddling their thumbs doing their level best to ignore crime. The truth is there is far more crime being reported than they can possibly respond to, especially in places like Seattle (which has the highest per-capita rate of property crime overall in the nation, iirc). On top of that, police staffing levels are at historic lows in some cities- in Seat…

Property crime is up everywhere. Nothing societally has changed, so I think the onus is on you to prove they aren’t just sitting there twiddling their thumbs. With their powerful unions and patterns of “blue flu”, the police don’t exactly have a great track record of response (not even going into the weeds of armed responses gone awry).

Re: Where do stolen bikes go?

#183

Post by idontpost »

girvo wrote: post #147
icelancer wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Cops really don't give a shit about theft unless it's from a business. Have had my place of home and work both burglarized. The difference is that at work they show up, take tons of notes, interview you and your employees, and then ignore you. I vastly prefer the home burglary experience. At least they're honest about not caring. Both times I had 1080p footage with clear vision of the thieves and cars. Jack shit d…

It’s worrying though. It’s part of the social contract, and I worry about vigilantism rising if cops not doing anything about the majority of crime that affects most normal people is ignored, and that gets worse.

[dead]

Re: Where do stolen bikes go?

#184

Post by vkou »

prawn wrote: post #134
maximinus_thrax wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm also in the western, US (the PNW) and my bike was stolen a couple of years back. It had a sticker and a registration number from my apartment building, which they called and left their phone number saying they found the bike abandoned and want to return it. I called the number, and they told me to meet up somewhere in a relatively rough neighborhood. I told them I would love to meet up in front of a police precin…

Isn't that incredible. It's almost "We can't go with you to that place and investigate a crime because a crime might happen!" I'm not from the US and I've only ever had positive interactions with police, but cases like this which would be low effort for them and have a useful impact on petty crime in their region, seem very frustrating.

> Isn't that incredible. It's almost "We can't go with you to that place and investigate a crime because a crime might happen!"

That's an SPD[1] problem. As a department, its worse then useless.

[1] Not that they are some weird outlier in this regard among US police forces.

Re: Where do stolen bikes go?

#185

Post by DiggyJohnson »

netsharc wrote: post #139
blamazon wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a ratty bike in college that I never bothered to lock to the bike racks, because I had bought it very cheaply and I had insufficient money to repair it properly. Almost everything that could be broken while still remaining technically rideable, was broken. One day - gone! I breathed a sigh of relief and went about my day. Two years pass. I'm walking to class one day on the same campus and I see a very similar l…

> In a ship of Theseus kind of way it wasn't even truly my bike anymore. Behold, the bicycle of Theseus. If you stole it back could you say "arguably, this isn't theft!"? But I guess a judge would say you stole the parts of the bike that the new owner fitted.

This reminds me of my buddy’s RuneScape account that got hacked. Over five years later he managed to recover the account, and many of his skills has been botted (very against the rules) to max level, as well as being hugely wealthy.

That account recovery created some interesting ethical questions.

Re: Where do stolen bikes go?

#186

Post by MrVandemar »

netsharc wrote: post #139
blamazon wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a ratty bike in college that I never bothered to lock to the bike racks, because I had bought it very cheaply and I had insufficient money to repair it properly. Almost everything that could be broken while still remaining technically rideable, was broken. One day - gone! I breathed a sigh of relief and went about my day. Two years pass. I'm walking to class one day on the same campus and I see a very similar l…

> In a ship of Theseus kind of way it wasn't even truly my bike anymore. Behold, the bicycle of Theseus. If you stole it back could you say "arguably, this isn't theft!"? But I guess a judge would say you stole the parts of the bike that the new owner fitted.

I guess if the parts were fitted and bolted to the bike you could argue that they were "aggresively gifted".

Re: Where do stolen bikes go?

#187

Post by vkou »

zdragnar wrote: post #171
yodsanklai wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is scandalous. I wonder if you could somehow sue the police for not doing their job, or report the guy who refused to investigate.

There seems to be some silly misconception that police sit around twiddling their thumbs doing their level best to ignore crime. The truth is there is far more crime being reported than they can possibly respond to, especially in places like Seattle (which has the highest per-capita rate of property crime overall in the nation, iirc). On top of that, police staffing levels are at historic lows in some cities- in Seat…

> (which has the highest per-capita rate of property crime overall in the nation, iirc).

12th on burglary, 13th on larceny, 40th on motor vehicle theft, 14th 'total' out of 100 US cities.

51st on violent crime, though, so surely, there should be plenty of police resources that aren't devoted on homicides and assaults and drug violence, and other things of that nature.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b...

Re: Where do stolen bikes go?

#188

Post by united893 »

blhack wrote: post #179

I had a bike stolen at burning man, and it ended up in NEW ZEALAND! I couldn't believe it. I was able to track it for a little while via the tile app, but it eventually stopped being available. Would have been such a cool story to get it back. https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/kiwis-on-a-mission-to-find-ele...

Did you get it back? The reddit post was deleted it seems. What happened?

Re: Where do stolen bikes go?

#189

Post by thatguy0900 »

winter_blue wrote: post #163
denton-scratch wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I considered warning the WM police that I was going to rock up at the thieves' front door, and ask them nicely to give me back my property. And warning the cops that I expected a breach of the peace to occur, becauase I thought it was likely they would beat me up. Failing to take measures to prevent a breach of the peace that they had been warned about would be bad publicity, at best. But I'm not inclined to ta…

How hard would it be be to get a gun (even a hunting rifle) or other weapons in the UK? If you did tell the police that you were going to take the law into your own hands, what would happen?

It's never hard to get a gun, you can make a slam fire shotgun at any local hardware store with minimal tools involved. Ammo is another story

Re: Where do stolen bikes go?

#190

Post by fsckboy »

mycall wrote: post #176
isoprophlex wrote: post #10

Once I lost a bike that was parked right outside my house. Couple of days later I saw a guy ride around on my bike! I sprinted over and somewhat aggressively yelled "you're on my bike, buddy!" He got off, very politely handed me back my bike, and thanked me for letting him borrow it. Almost made me feel like I was the bad guy in the situation. Anyway I guess in some cases, a stolen bike doesn't go far at all.

Is it unethical to buy a "cheap" replacement bicycle if your previous one was stolen?

it's no less ethical than buying a "cheap" bicycle to begin with
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