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Where do stolen bikes go?

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Re: Where do stolen bikes go?

#291

Post by gambiting »

playingalong wrote: post #278
gambiting wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's heavily implied, and to pretend it's not is dishonest at best.

(not a fan of US gun laws) Not necessarily. I think just carrying a weapon might make the other party more likely to cooperate. Even if you don't take it out.

Sure, but imagine calling the police and saying "I'm carrying a massive knife and I'm going to my ex to get my things back". There is no threat here. It's legal to own and carry a knife(in most places). It's legal to go to your ex and go grab your things.

But I bet that if you did that police would show up as there is an implied threat of violence. I mean, clearly it applies even in OP's case, since police did show up - I'm just surprised he didn't get in trouble for basically using the police as his personal bodyguards by implying things will get violent.

Re: Where do stolen bikes go?

#292

Post by vkou »

zdragnar wrote: post #276
dclowd9901 wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 respons…

You can't seriously write off 800,000 emergency calls because "maybe not all of them require police response", and then presume that 9/10 police officers sit around twiddling their thumbs. This is pure intellectual dishonesty. Edit: Also, there's more that police do than administrative paperwork and investigating crime. I'd hazard a guess that a plurality, if not a majority, of police officers on any given shift are…

SPD hasn't done any meaningful traffic enforcement for years. The roads are an utter madhouse.

They might show up to a car crash, though.

Re: Where do stolen bikes go?

#293

Post by jstarfish »

Symbiote wrote: post #244
swarnie wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder what country this actually works in? Our police had a policy of not attending house burglaries with odd street numbers to cut their required response rate in half. I can't imagine them even answering the phone over a bike. The only reason i would call the police is to get a reference number for an insurance claim.

At least for a short while, and I do not understand why, bicycle theft was somehow linked to terrorism by London's police. See [1] for example. I had a bicycle stolen, and after filing the report the police phoned me to ask for more details on the lock I'd used. I later found it on Gumtree, with a description ending something like "Call Peter on 07123456789, meet at Forest Heath Station". Putting the mobile phone num…

> At least for a short while, and I do not understand why, bicycle theft was somehow linked to terrorism by London's police.

Counter-Terrorism Patrol Unit.

IME speculation: for security-adjacent personnel, recovery efforts (equipment, fraud, etc.) are a great way to quantify the work you do when you don't otherwise generate revenue. You can't take credit for disrupting events that didn't happen [because you intervened], but nobody can argue with you recovering or clawing back $x in lost/stolen assets.

They were probably tasked with patrolling for misplaced explosives and other drama, but since incident count is low, they were given supplementary tasks (like tagging bikes they come across on patrol) to justify their salary and foster positive PR.

Re: Where do stolen bikes go?

#294

Post by actually_a_dog »

jerkstate wrote: post #117
actually_a_dog wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the Oakland/Berkeley/Albany/El Cerrito area, you want to check out Karim's in Berkeley.

lol, that shop is the first thing I thought of when I read the headline

Yeah, Karim got raided a few years back but they couldn't make anything stick. Most people don't even record serial numbers on their bikes, much less register them with any type of organization that police can check for stolen bikes.

Re: Where do stolen bikes go?

#295

Post by TechBro8615 »

akira2501 wrote: post #18
lucumo wrote: post #13

This is not really surprising to locals. The joke was always that if your bike is stolen when you get back, you'd just steal another one and keep the circulation going. During the 90s the stories were about heroin junkies selling bikes for 25 NLG (11.34 EUR). Clearly not the type of people with the organizational skills to set up an international crime syndicate. These were stories, and it's good/interesting to check…

When the article stated “We thought bikes might be stolen and sent abroad." I nearly spat out my coffee. It really is amusing to watch MIT laboratory types spend a bunch of time and effort to rediscover what was plainly known beforehand.

You've got to give them some credit. MIT laboratory types are apparently clever enough to get funding for a multi-month "research trip" to Amsterdam.

Re: Where do stolen bikes go?

#296

Post by floxy »

User23 wrote: post #112
grecy wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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".

Not a lawyer, but talked about this with one once and this is what I remember. By definition you can't steal something that belongs to you. The fact that someone else stole it doesn't make it stop being yours. However it might still be illegal to take it back if doing so involves breaking other laws, like breaking and entering, assault, or what have you. It might not be crazy to risk a trespass, since those generally…

>bet dollars to donuts

Donuts are now over $14/dozen each where I live. Another casualty of inflation I guess.

Re: Where do stolen bikes go?

#297

Post by blhack »

united893 wrote: post #188
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?

Never got it back unfortunately. An expensive story, but a pretty funny one!

Re: Where do stolen bikes go?

#298

Post by 908B64B197 »

acadapter wrote: post #222
adastra22 wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is taking your own property back being a bad citizen?

In some countries it might be illegal to disturb someone's possession of something, as a general rule, regardless of legitimate ownership. For example, in Sweden, if it's been more than 24 hours, it's illegal to do it on your own.

I guess that's parts and parcel for a country that just stopped reporting crime stats for certain crimes a while ago.

Re: Where do stolen bikes go?

#299

Post by prawn »

leoedin wrote: post #240
Camillo wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you put the bike thieves in jail, sure. And when your e-bike gets stolen, you may well think you want them in jail. But the next week, the New York Times writes an article about how there are too many non-violent offenders in jail and the incarceration crisis is a national shame. Now the e-bike owner is outraged and wants the thief out of jail. It's not trivial to come up with a punishment that will deter the thie…

I don't think it's even about putting them in jail for a long time. The current situation has basically zero downsides to stealing a bike. You take it, you sell it, you have cash. The police don't care, they won't even investigate. If the chances of getting caught for this sort of crime were non-zero, even if the repercussions were a heavy fine, it would hopefully make people think twice before getting involved in it…

With near zero downside, you get rampant crime in particular categories, as seen in San Francisco, or joyriding by underage kids.

Re: Where do stolen bikes go?

#300

Post by fuzzfactor »

johnnyApplePRNG wrote: post #198

I bought something from a police auction aggregator business in Ontario once and when I went into the location to pick it up I got a chance to chat with the owner briefly. I mentioned how many bikes I saw on hand, and he proudly told me that since his inception about 20 years ago he had auctioned off more than 1 MILLION stolen bicycles. 1 million stolen bikes, retrieved by police in Ontario alone in the past 20 years…

>Where do stolen bikes go?

Law enforcement had more in one place than I ever saw.

Going to police auctions probably the thing they have the most of is recovered bikes that had never been returned to their owners.

And the buyers were regulars, many pawnbrokers who you could tell normally purchase continuously directly from thieves, picking them up super cheap in quantity whenever the cops do have them on offer.

And the cops completely aware the whole time.

At a different time, I was a theft victim from a music rehearsal space, where a guy left town with some of our nice gear when I was on vacation. Leaving behind some of his ratty things, but people figured out who he was right away, then found some pawn tickets and a couple were my items.

I went to that pawnshop and they had not loaned him much so I just bought them back. But there were two big speakers and one amp that I had no ticket for and a couple other guys were victims too. We made police reports with our serial numbers and the cops said they have a good relationship with the pawnbrokers and a very effective system to see if any recent loans were documented to these exact items. Everything was by the book.

One guy did get a speaker back that the cops found in a different pawnshop, but I kept checking for months and my stuff never turned up.

Until a couple years later when I got a call from a detective who wanted evidence on that same perpetrator in a more serious crime. Turned out the cops had my recovered amplifier for quite some time, and it was about to be auctioned off and surely he knew it would go cheap. But he wanted to know the original purchase prices so he could file enhanced charges needed to apprehend the thief immediately. I gave him the information and he faxed me the paperwork I needed to pick up my amp from their property department before the deadline. I was well aware that if this new violation had not come up, I would never have seen my amp again.

Never did find the speakers until a couple more years later I was watching a new band play at a local joint and sure enough, they had these uncommon series speakers right up front, and I discreetly checked them out and it was surely the ones my brother bought when he was a teenager and I had been deeply familiar with for years, with distinctive wear & tear. That I had faxed the original receipt to the cops that time.

But I decided not to say anything because it was a good band, and they were making better use of them than we would be doing by then. Plus they had replaced the horns with some more professional grade, these stout old boxes were sounding better than ever.

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