Since police does nothing and reasonable protections can be fairly easily circumvented I think that the best approach to property theft is just budget it into you life. If the stuff you've got stolen of you since you were born are worth less than two times your last months salary than you are good. If not then ask yourself if you really earn enough to be buying such expensive things.
Where do stolen bikes go?
261–270 of 307 posts
Re: Where do stolen bikes go?
#262There'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…
My VanMoof was recently stolen and although they came through with a replacement, they did not appear to try to track down the bike even though the tracker placed in a fairly precise location in Berlin.
I am sure the bike hunters exist but it wouldn’t surprise me if much of their work is PR.
Re: Where do stolen bikes go?
#263Earlier quoted context omitted.
RFID probably doesn't bring much, engraving is easier and is hard to remove without marks. About that, France has an official method of tagging bikes which has been mandatory on new bikes since jan 2021. See [0] for doc in English and [1] for a video. [0]: https://www.bicycode.org/pages-1/Documents_PDF/plaquette__Bi... [1]: https://www.bicycode.org/faire-marquer-son-velo.rub-2/le-mar...
Sounds like a gross expansion of government tracking power to make it mandatory. This is equivalent to license plates on cars, which is already used to track people around in many countries.
Yea, license plates... What an abhorrent government overreach! I wish they didn't exist, at least then hit and runs would finally skyrocket!
Re: Where do stolen bikes go?
#264Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why shouldn't it? If I rang the police and said "I'm about to commit violence against someone else" you can bet I'd be arrested. Why doesn't the same rule apply here? Carrying a weapon being or not being legal has no bearing on this at all.
Why violence. He just announced he's going to pick up his property that got misplaced. Gun is just for his protection. Nothing out of ordinary here.
It's heavily implied, and to pretend it's not is dishonest at best.
Re: Where do stolen bikes go?
#265There'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…
For everyone else wanting to see the bike hunt videos: https://www.youtube.com/@vanmoof/search?query=bike%20hunt
Re: Where do stolen bikes go?
#266Re: Where do stolen bikes go?
#267Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 recove…
Thanks. The bikes are beautiful which is obviously a double edge sword as it makes them that much more desirable to thieves. It looks like the bikes start at $2500 so $133 a year for insurance isn't terrible. The fact that they offer this just makes me think wow this a forward thinking company, which is also evident in their bikes.
Re: Where do stolen bikes go?
#268There'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…
Vanmoof is a shit company with shit bikes and even more shit customer service. Purely aesthetics and marketing. Stay away.
Also Vanmoof and the BMW of the bicycle world, most people who ride them, do it in a super annoying way.
Re: Where do stolen bikes go?
#269Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
Clearly he is determined to his objetive...
Re: Where do stolen bikes go?
#270Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
911 calls can’t be used in this metric since they encompass non-police emergencies and non-emergencies as well.
So going off reported crimes, we have 1/10 of a crime per officer per day, or maybe better put, 1 crime per 10 days per officer. So tell me more about how they’re not twiddling their thumbs. Even accounting for administrative work (court appearances, paperwork, etc), that is a ridiculously low crime response rate.