Just had the love of my life stolen from me yesterday. This steed has taken me over hills and yonder. The Sam Wise to my Frodo. I freakin' love this bike man 😢
So I chained it to a fence inside a front garden while doing a couple hours of pet sitting, come back and its gone. Hindsight is 20/20 and I'm kicking myself of course. Should have locked it elsewhere. Should have brought that industrial size lock I kept getting advertised to me.
Either way… I report it to the police. I was asked three questions before they hung up on me.
Did the thieves leave their possessions behind at the scene? (obvious f**king not)
How much is the bike? About 2-3k
Did you catch them on camera? The property has no door cam or anything, but I told them about a public road camera pointing right at the place.
After those 3 basic questions, I now get a message this morning saying that they have nothing to go on, nothing to investigate and won't be doing anything.
My mind is blown…
No attempt to get that CCTV footage?
They didn't even ask me what my bikes model or description was!! I read statistics that over 50% of stolen bikes get retrieved… but only 5% of those get back to their owners. NO SHT SHERLOCKE!! When you don't even make a note on the case… what the persons bike even was…
Sorry guys… I'm mad and grieving my loss lol. I didn't expect much from the police. I even for a second entertained that they kept track of places like facebook marketplace, ebay, gumtree etc for stolen items.
But now I see that they do LITERALLY nothing.
So what's my next step here? Keep a tab of online spaces for it and go vigilante retrieval? Pray that when I try to force my bike back off the thief selling it, that I don't get beaten or stabbed?
Any advise will be so very much appreciated. Can't believe police have given up this hard with handling theft
by FFPeasant
22 Comments
If you do find it for sale online, and can somehow confirm its yours, id reach back out to the cops to see if they can show up with you for the “buy”
My local police also dont do shit for cyclists either. But, when i had bikes stolen from my garage (wife left the door open, so they had super easy access) this is what mine told me to do, and theyd show up to the meet up to make a bust. Otherwise, they had “more important” work to do.
The problem is bike theft is so unbelievably difficult to solve. Bikes are thrown onto shipping containers and taken into Europe immediately.
I appreciate the CCTV camera might’ve pointed towards the bike, but the chance of it having the clarity to identify a person or persons is small.
This is why you insure bikes and if it is valuable don’t leave it outside.
Police refused to investigate my theft.
I gave them a 3 hour window, 7pm till midnight. The lockup uses a fob entry that you have to provide name, phone number, address etc (along with ID when signing up) to get in and out. There’s 3 CCTV cameras. I told them my bike was direct line of sight of all 3 cameras, all they’d need to do is fastforward the CCTV till they see someone in that timeframe stand around the bike for a bit, then leave with it.
They told me they didn’t have time to search through 3 hours of footage. I pointed out they don’t need to watch ever second and was “told off” for being unhelpful.
NB: 5 hours not 3, shouldn’t reddit during meetings.
You watch too much TV.
What do you expect, a group of salty older Detective Sergeants analyzing CCTV saying, “enhance…zoom in…enhance..aha!”.
These thefts are so rampant, and stolen bikes are so easy to sell, everyone is doing it. Spoiler alert, CCTV will show a yoof with a hoodie stealing your bike.
Buy a Brompton and carry it in with you.
Those cameras aren’t to protect *your* property
Your bike is probably in Albania now, much like mine in 2013.
Not just bike theft, they don’t really like doing much of anything. A police salary is basically thug UBI. Keeps troublemakers in a uniform and out the way but doesn’t solve any crimes.
They’d rather arrest you for a tweet.
Unless you manage to find it somehow yourself, the bikes gone for good 😢
I had my commuter stolen from a locked bike room with a camera pointed right at it.
It didn’t help that my apartment manager took 3-5 business weeks to respond to my request to forward the security camera footage to the police … so there was no footage when they finally did look.
But my bikes are covered by my renters insurance, especially since they’re kept indoors, and I was able to get most of the value of a new bike back because of it.
Look, I realize your bike is/was very important to you, but. . . how to put this best, the police have *other* stuff to be doing most of the time than spending hours running down cctv footage and watching it to get a grainy image of someone taking bolt cutters to your chain. And, should they/you get that footage. . . what then? Do you think they just magically say, “hey, that’s pete the clown, we have his address in West Brompton, sure” so off they go and, low and behold it’s not there, cause he pawned it and ain’t talkin.
and yeah, your bike has a serial number, but guess who doesn’t give a shit?:
1. The theif.
2. The fence
3. The buyer (cause it’s probably in some EU country and they got it from ‘a friend’ for $500, which. . . is to say, they know it’s hot.
Pretty much the only time a serial number helps is if you registered that serial with someone and if the police nab a garage/container full of bikes and parse them out. This happens once every 5-10 years or so.
Instead of raging at the police take the time to think things through for your next bike:
1. Make certain you have insurance.
2. Get a GOOD lock. Perhaps a grinder resistant lock. Litelok, hiplock, or, since you are in UK, Kryptonite Diamond and get their ‘warranty’, cause UK laws on warranties are such that Kryptonite WILL pay (unlike on this side of the pond where they will laugh and laugh).
3. Look into PowUnity. It’s a tracker that goes in the mid drive motor. In EU (dunno about UK) if it’s moved out of geolocation, it automatically calls local police. In US. . . not so much.
Layer your security and insurance.
Sorry for your bike. Sucks when they do nothing…
Our Police started to sell theft bikes themselves, it wasn’t better haha
Even with that CCTV they’re never finding your bike, I’m sorry. A guy walking past probably got through your lock in 20 seconds and disappeared.
The police don’t work for you. Or me.
People should know this in 2025.
Bike alarm are underrated for some reasons.
Thieves tried to stole my bike 3 or 4 times.
Everyone is gansta until the bike alarm hit and it’s very loud.
Make the thieve run away almost anytime.
I saw my stolen bike being ridden by a scrote in one of the local estates. I’d already reported and collected a new bike on the insurance, but I called the police anyway (whilst parked outside the house that the rider had called at). Was told not to approach them and that no police would be attending the scene.
I parked up at a supermarket and, walking back to the house, saw the guy riding toward me. I stopped him, thanked him for looking after it for me and motioned for him to get off, which he did. Whole thing took three seconds and he didn’t say a word, even when I was riding off. He possibly wasn’t even the one who stole it so may well have felt victimised, but whatever.
All my bikes are tagged and geo-ringfenced now, so I’ll probably know almost immediately if they’ve been nicked. I’ll scope out the situation and see if I can sort it myself (I’m 15 years older than I was last time!) before calling the police in future.
Buy a tracker and discreetly install it on your next bike.
Probably want an alarm as well.
Hell, I got jumped by a couple neo Nazis on my way to work and the cops didn’t give a shit. Right in front of a has station with multiple cameras. Never even bothered to try and get a license plate.
But they were probably on the same side.
Pretty sure you read erroneous statistics. I’m betting under 10% of stolen bikes get retrieved.
Police have more important crimes to solve than stolen property.
The odds of them investigating you for openly criticizing them on the Internet is very high though.
This is why you hide an Apple Airtag somewhere inconspicuous on the bike.
Where do y’all put AirTags on a roadbike? I tried to put one but can’t find a good spot since I’m a very forgetful person, bike theft is not really a problem in the UAE or my home country Malaysia.
Time after time again you can find your stolen property, whatever it is, prove it’s yours and the police will still be like yeah we aren’t in the game of confronting people over stolen property. Actually did you steal it? What’s your angle?! lol
I don’t wanna be one of those people, as being a police officer must be an exhausting job mentally and physically but time after time police seem to be focused on strange things when you go to them for help. Get rear ended? Police want to search my vehicle. Father goes missing? Want to search my apartment to make sure “he’s not hiding there”. Stolen property being sold on Craigslist? There isn’t anything we can do about this and don’t confront the person either or you could be charged.
Again I understand the nuances of these issues and that it’s not always so simple but idk man. Just say your bike was filed with marijuana and loose cigarettes and that should get them to track it down apparently.