I did not read the article. I do know that stolen bikes, when I was a kid, was auctioned off by the local police.
Where do stolen bikes go?
201–210 of 307 posts
Re: Where do stolen bikes go?
#202Earlier quoted context omitted.
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).
Here is some super trivial googling for you:
https://www.neighborhoodscout.com/wa/seattle/crime
Over 46k crimes (property and violent)
1200 officers funded, though I've seen other stats that there are only 940 active employed
800k 911 calls per year
https://www.seattle.gov/police/about-us/about-the-department...
That's 3-ish 911 responses per day, assuming an average of one officer for every call. Add on top of that all of the other things happening, and you would need to be wilfully blind to believe they are sitting around with nothing better to do than look for a stolen bike.
Re: Where do stolen bikes go?
#203Earlier quoted context omitted.
Vanmoof is a shit company with shit bikes and even more shit customer service. Purely aesthetics and marketing. Stay away.
Your opinion being based on...?
This brand is known for bikes that break very quickly. The bikes are good, but don’t last. They are very expensive and the replacement parts are too.
The VanMoof or Tweakers forums are filled with users talking about the repairs the did this week to their bike, or that they send their bike back since it broke the week they bought it.
Re: Where do stolen bikes go?
#204Once 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.
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…
At my old house, a renter across the street was part of a bike theft ring. Stolen bikes would come in and out, sometimes with different pieces.
I imagine your bike was stolen by someone, maybe fixed up, maybe sold as-is for cheap and then fixed up by the new possesor, who may not have known it was stolen, just cheap.
Re: Where do stolen bikes go?
#205Earlier quoted context omitted.
I had this with a stolen iphone in Houston, Texas. I called the local police and they said they couldn't help, I told the operator that's okay, I have a gun and I'll go retrieve it myself. An officer was standing in front of me 10 minutes later. We got the phone back.
And that didn't get you in any trouble?
As a Texan, that doesn't surprise me. In some places, saying that kind of thing could maybe violate the letter of the law. Texas is the kind of place where it doesn't violate the letter of the law, because you can concealed carry, kind of doesn't violate the spirit of the law, which is quite permissive in allowing the use of force in defense of property ( https://www.dougmurphylaw.com/defense-of-property ) (not to say that it does permit you to use force after it's stolen and you want to go get it back, just that doing so is closer to the spirit of the law than it would be in many places), and even if it did violate the law, the general ethos of the state is such that unless something actually comes of it, shooting your mouth off like that would just kind of be like jaywalking. If technically a crime, if nothing came of it, it's just a freewheeling culture in terms of weapons, defending property with force, freedom of speech, and egotistical violent grandstanding, and it'll probably be ignored as an insignificant minor technical violation not worth prosecuting, again, as long as nothing really comes of it.
It's hard to put into words, but as a Texan, I can see how police would react exactly like they did. No guarantees, especially for minorities, it could go very badly, but the whole situation isn't surprising to me at all as a Texas native.
Re: Where do stolen bikes go?
#206There's a Dutch bike company (VanMoof) that offers a Theft Recovery service for their bikes: they have teams of people that track down the bike (using GPS primarily) and basically steal it back. They used to produce monthly videos of bike recovery operations, though it looks like they've stopped the videos so you'll have to scroll past a few years of promo videos: https://www.youtube.com/@vanmoof Often they recover t…
The videos are interesting. Will VanMoof go anywhere in Europe for you then to recover these then? I see Strasbourg and Stockholm in addition to the Netherlands. Any insight into how the pricing works for recovery?
From [1] it looks like
* You pay $400 for 3 years of coverage. * Must have the bike locked and file a police report. * They can choose whether or not to attempt recovery. * If they choose not to, or fail to recover the bike, they'll replace it. * Up to 3 replacements are covered in the 3 years.
So it's really just theft insurance but they can attempt to recover low-hanging fruit. In wonder what their attempted recovery rate is.
Re: Where do stolen bikes go?
#207Earlier 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…
At my old house, a renter across the street was part of a bike theft ring. Stolen bikes would come in and out, sometimes with different pieces. I imagine your bike was stolen by someone, maybe fixed up, maybe sold as-is for cheap and then fixed up by the new possesor, who may not have known it was stolen, just cheap.
I choose to believe in an idealistic liberator of machine souls with a procrastinatory flair for bike restoration :)
Re: Where do stolen bikes go?
#208There's a Dutch bike company (VanMoof) that offers a Theft Recovery service for their bikes: they have teams of people that track down the bike (using GPS primarily) and basically steal it back. They used to produce monthly videos of bike recovery operations, though it looks like they've stopped the videos so you'll have to scroll past a few years of promo videos: https://www.youtube.com/@vanmoof Often they recover t…
> basically steal it back This brings up an interesting legal question. Is it illegal to steal back your own property? Even if you trespass onto private property to do so, the person would have to get the Police involved to do anything about that, at which time you can say "Sure, I'll take the trespassing charge, and while we're here I'm leaving with all of my property".
You just call the police, say it is your bike, they verify the serial number (you need to provide some proof, or register the theft prior). Then, if everything is in order, police just cut the lock.
Re: Where do stolen bikes go?
#209Once 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?
No? What are you trying to get at? I assume there's something you have on your mind that I'm missing to understand why there would be any type of moral quandary here.
Re: Where do stolen bikes go?
#210Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don’t understand this. Are they assuming everyone reporting a theft stole the bike they’re reporting in the first place? Even if that was the case, who in their right mind would admit it on a police report?
It is a joke...
I didn’t hear the tone in your text