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Seattle vigilante reuniting stolen bikes with their owners

theguardian.com

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Re: Seattle vigilante reuniting stolen bikes with their owners

#131

Post by joncrocks »

walrus01 wrote: post #124
marincounty wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bet you live in the Bay Area? Specifically, the east bay? Near Berkeley? There's a two well known flea markets where bike thieves sell their stolen property. Even if you are at the flea market, with you bike's serial number in hand, the cops do not come out. A huge guy, who had his bike stolen once too many times advertises in CL. He will literally show up at the flea market, and take your bike back, after you show…

"A huge guy"...? New service like uber: "rent a 350 pound Samoan" VC money please!

Vigilant-me.

I'll take some equity for the name.

Re: Seattle vigilante reuniting stolen bikes with their owners

#132

Post by Natsu »

Someone wrote: post #121
mikepurvis wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the GPS only needs to be active when the bike is a) moving, with b) the BLE phone connection absent. There are ultra low power motion sensor ICs that literally have a GPIO for "motion detected". Put that on the reset pin of your CC2541, and you'll be set for months of battery life.

You don't care where your bike went, you care where it is, and you want a way to get that data remotely. The GPS only needs to be on when you call your bike, and that's where the problem lies: you have to find a way to decrease power usage of the GSM part. Switching it on for a minute or so every hour if outside BLE range could help, but would make it harder to locate your bike fast. Maybe, it should start at a 100%…

Couldn't you power something like this from the bike itself somehow?

Re: Seattle vigilante reuniting stolen bikes with their owners

#133

Post by a_imho »

archgoon wrote: post #62
ck2 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the police simply do not care about bike thefts so the criminals know they can get away with it.

Not strictly true; the article details that 'The Batman' actually works in conjunction with the police. It seems more like the case that he's taken on the overhead of investigating and coordinating meetups. Once that's done, the police seem happy to do the actual arrest. However, this sounds like there are some very bad incentives in the PD, where performing arrests is prioritized over investigation. However, I think…

Our local police or other stake holders actually tried and succeeded in disbanding the groups chasing bike thieves with bait bikes. You can watch the episodes on yt.

Re: Seattle vigilante reuniting stolen bikes with their owners

#134

Post by vostrocity »

mikepurvis wrote: post #94
dpark wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have to be honest. I'm seriously doubting that math you didn't do. In my experience GPS murders small batteries. And putting large batteries on bikes seems like a nonstarter for bikes that aren't electric assist.

But the GPS only needs to be active when the bike is a) moving, with b) the BLE phone connection absent. There are ultra low power motion sensor ICs that literally have a GPIO for "motion detected". Put that on the reset pin of your CC2541, and you'll be set for months of battery life.

Bluetooth LE and motion sensors are actually brilliant, but I think we're treating this too much as an individual problem when we can eliminate bike theft in the first place and not worry about installing trackers.

I've always thought about doing stings from the other direction: with bait bikes. For a bait bike, you just need a bike and a GPS tracker with a battery life of a week or so (a poorly-locked bike will be stolen in a matter of days). The GPS tracker is inserted in the seat tube, and if you glue/oxidize the seat in the seat tube, the thief can't remove the seat to check even if they are smart enough to check for a tracker. You can even add security cameras where you set up the bait bike (outside your apartment or home is a great place) to get additional information. The GPS tracker then gives you a location of either where the thief lives or where they store their stolen property, which lets you bust them pretty easily.

Even in a bicycle-friendly town with 100,000 in population (ala Berkeley), I can't imagine that there are more than a few hundred bike thieves. It would take only a dozen individuals doing bait bikes to bring down bike theft drastically. Combine that with "Bike Batman" style vigilantism identifying stolen bikes on the used market, and I think it's possible to reduce bike theft to near zero in a local area.

Re: Seattle vigilante reuniting stolen bikes with their owners

#135

Post by vostrocity »

marincounty wrote: post #89
ptaipale wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Finding your bike is not helpful if the police is not interested. And they usually aren't where I live. Except if you're yourself willing to enforce your retrieval with violence... at which point the police will be interested if everything does not go easily.

I bet you live in the Bay Area? Specifically, the east bay? Near Berkeley? There's a two well known flea markets where bike thieves sell their stolen property. Even if you are at the flea market, with you bike's serial number in hand, the cops do not come out. A huge guy, who had his bike stolen once too many times advertises in CL. He will literally show up at the flea market, and take your bike back, after you show…

You have to consider how difficult it is for the police to do anything in that circumstance – it's just 'he say, she say.' It might be easier if you've filed a police report and your bike is registered, but even then there is no evidence (especially on the spot) that the seller (who is probably just lingering around and not an actual registered flea market seller) stole the bike. I think part of it is also the culture: you don't want cops coming into a flea market to arrest people, because the whole flea market is a bit of a legal grey zone.

However, you should definitely press charges every time if you do get the police involved. That's the only way to reduce bike theft. If you don't press charges, the thief simply goes and steals another bike the next day.

Re: Seattle vigilante reuniting stolen bikes with their owners

#136

Post by vostrocity »

nmrm2 wrote: post #56
mc808 wrote: post #6

I wonder if there is more that bicycle manufacturers/dealers can do to prevent theft or help recover stolen bikes - not because they're obligated but just to improve sales. Especially as the price approaches four digits, "what if this gets stolen?" has to be near the top of most potential buyers' list of concerns and probably chills sales to some degree.

> Especially as the price approaches four digits, "what if this gets stolen?" has to be near the top of most potential buyers' list of concerns and probably chills sales to some degree. If you're spending that much on a bike then you're cycling regularly (communter and/or every weekend type). You're not going to ride a shitty bike if you're riding that often. Bikes aren't like cars -- a Corolla will get you from poin…

What? The bikes that get stolen in public are the bikes that get used regularly (usually daily).

Re: Seattle vigilante reuniting stolen bikes with their owners

#137

Post by vostrocity »

loeg wrote: post #12
dkopi wrote: post #2

"The married engineer, who is in his 30s, and has been quietly tracking down stolen bikes for the last year, spoke to the Guardian on the condition of anonymity amid increasing curiosity about his identity, motives and methodology." I'm guessing the main reason he wants anonymity isn't from criminals, but from his family, who would obviously kill him if they knew how much danger he's putting himself into.

Bike thieves are hardly organized criminals with weapons. Probably mostly homeless or very poor people without better ideas. It's a very low margin crime.

Maybe not organized, but usually specialized. To steal a bike, you need a set of tools (like a modified car jack http://www.citylab.com/navigator/2014/10/your-u-lock-is-basi...) and knowledge of where to sell the parts.

Re: Seattle vigilante reuniting stolen bikes with their owners

#138

Post by pavel_lishin »

pyre wrote: post #97
PKop wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Either the thief is prevented from committing further crimes, or more people will have their property stolen by him. There is a cost to refusing to press charges, paid by his future victims.

Based on this logic, he should have been killed rather than arrested. No future victims!

If we're going to play "absurd conclusions" game, my move is to declare that we should kill everyone. No future victims, ever!

Re: Seattle vigilante reuniting stolen bikes with their owners

#139

Post by victorhooi »

ptaipale wrote: post #130
victorhooi wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have one of their products. It's not a bad product - but the company seems to have gone bust. They've stopped answering any emails, and the last news was that their Seat Post Tracker was meant to launch in 2012/2013: http://www.bike-eu.com/sales-trends/nieuws/2012/8/spybike-se... Their current trackers are 3G only - and most countries are shutting down (or have already shut down) their 3G GSM networks. I'm definite…

Their current trackers are 3G only - and most countries are shutting down (or have already shut down) their 3G GSM networks. What? Some operators are closing 3G networks, but not, I think, "most countries". Frequency allocation is moved to LTE, yes. But 3G modems fall back to 2G (GSM) which is'nt going away any time soon in most places (yes, there are exceptions), and 2G is quite enough to send location info.

Sorry, I meant 2G - e.g. in Australia, Telstra/Optus have already announced shut-down dates, the third network Vodafone hasn't, but they're expected to soon - which renders the device useless.

Re: Seattle vigilante reuniting stolen bikes with their owners

#140

Post by victorhooi »

victorhooi wrote: post #91
mc808 wrote: post #6

I wonder if there is more that bicycle manufacturers/dealers can do to prevent theft or help recover stolen bikes - not because they're obligated but just to improve sales. Especially as the price approaches four digits, "what if this gets stolen?" has to be near the top of most potential buyers' list of concerns and probably chills sales to some degree.

I use a Spybike ( http://www.spybike.com/ ) Unfortunately, the company seems to have gone bust. They have stopped responding to emails - and their tracker is 3G only - many countries have started to shut down their 3G GSM trackers. There was one on Kickstarter before called the "Bike Spike" - however, it turned out to be a fraud, and the creators ran away with backer's money (I didn't back them). The Spybike isn't ba…

Correction - I meant to say 2G only (as in, their trackers only work on the 2G GSM network, which is being shutdown in many/most places).
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