bike theft honeypot
December 10, 2016 11:43 AM   Subscribe

A local venue I frequent is a target for bike thefts. Items go frequently missing like wheels, lights, panniers, tools. How can I catch the perpetrators?

I live in an area where there is a large segment of transients who frequent the downtown area. I go to one particular activity fairly frequently by bike at the same day and time along with 20-50 other people many of whom are parking their rides outside along the same rack. Stuff disappears off their rides with disturbing frequency.

The venue is unresponsive. It would be relatively easy for them to post a cam in their windows to monitor this area. Perhaps I should actually approach them about the ongoing theft in person and I think I will do so to see if that's possible.

So, my somewhat idle fantasy is to post a bike there with some goodies with the express purpose of trapping the culprit(s). It's been going on for years so it might even be the same person, this is part of their route.

Practically speaking, this may not be doable in any real way I can accomplish. It's not like I'm going to build a blue-tooth enabled Arduino that send me real time vibrations to my pendant so I can rush outside and confront the arse doing this. Wouldn't really want to get into it in a personal way. I'm not carrying my cell during the event so can't get signaled in this way.

Securing my bike is job one, however it happens infrequently enough to me that I tend to let my guard down over time until tagged again, two oldish panniers with a tool kit gone.

Second idea would be to have a cam on the bike in a disguised or hidden fashion, impossible to easily steal the thing and point it at the rear of my honeypot bike to capture the culprit. Post video and prints all over and busted.

I am posting this out of post-theft musing. I am savvy enough not to leave anything out that would cause me to lose sleep, however, the ongoing injustice of this is enough to demand some form of action.

Anyhoos, curious if anyone has seen or contemplated some for of project of this type. Thanks.
posted by diode to Technology (13 answers total) 2 users marked this as a favorite
 
what have the police said?
posted by youchirren at 11:46 AM on December 10, 2016 [2 favorites]


How can I catch the perpetrators?

You tell the police everything you know, and you walk away. Vigilantism is a bad idea -- what would you even do if you caught them? How are you planning on preventing it escalating into e.g. physical violence?
posted by tocts at 11:48 AM on December 10, 2016 [8 favorites]


Are bikes being stolen or just accessories? The way to retrieve stolen bikes that I'm familiar with is to wait for them to show up on Craigslist or pawn shops, then bring in the police. Have you figured out where this stuff is going / is it nice enough to have a resale value vs. just being vandalism?

Also, catching one person doing this probably won't stop the thefts. It's likely easier to take your lights / tools / panniers in and get anti-theft nuts on your wheels than to convince everyone in a high-traffic area not to steal your stuff. Maybe the venue could add a coat/gear check inside or would at least put a sign in the window reminding folks to take stuff with them?
posted by momus_window at 12:00 PM on December 10, 2016


You do need a solid strategy for what happens after you catch them.

I'd work on pressuring the police to solve this, maybe by convincing a few other people to come to a city council meeting with you. I think it could make a real difference, unless your local government is unusually disfunctional -- which is a larger problem that _really_ would need your attention.

I know that setting up a camera or something is a more compelling activity, but that's why I am really happy to have my taxes paying for other people's educations -- so that we can figure out the most effective ways to solve real problems :)
posted by amtho at 12:13 PM on December 10, 2016 [1 favorite]


Police can leave bait bikes with trackers on them, you need to work with the police. Unless everyone who has been having things stolen files police reports, the police won't care. Step one is to get people to file reports for what's stolen.
posted by TheAdamist at 12:48 PM on December 10, 2016 [2 favorites]


...large segment of transients...

Are you thinking that random homeless people are stealing stuff?

If that's the case, I respectfully request that you take on the burden of securing your things, instead of focusing on getting them to change (or be punished for) their behavior. These folks already have enough to deal with. (I hope it goes without saying that I'm not condoning theft.)

On the other hand, if you think this is less random/more deliberate, e.g., the work of a person/group who are stealing and reselling, certainly start by filing reports and involving the police and, perhaps, asking the business to put a camera in the window.

Is there a local neighborhood watch group?
posted by she's not there at 1:20 PM on December 10, 2016 [6 favorites]


"The venue is unresponsive" --- is the bike rack provided by and maintained by the venue on the venue's property, or is it provided by the local government and on public property? I can see the venue staying out of it if the rack is public, not private, property.

The best thing to do would be to insure the cops are called for EVERY theft, for every wheel or pannier or whatever..... Vigilantism will only cause you grief; instead make sure the police know that area is a theft hotspot (proven to be, because there's so many thefts reported there!) and let them take it from there.
posted by easily confused at 1:27 PM on December 10, 2016 [3 favorites]


If the police are also unresponsive, you could organize to get more of a response:

- Work with the 20-50 other cyclists impacted to have them also contact the police. As easily confused suggests, make sure every theft is reported.
- Ask to make an appointment with the captain or other police official responsible for the area where the thefts take place, ideally as a group
- Show up as a group to a police community meeting, police commission hearing, whatever public opportunity exists for such things, and raise the issue together
- Contact your local elected officials. Try to arrange a group meeting with someone who represents you or at least a member of their staff.
- Work with the 20-50 other cyclists impacted to have them also contact your local elected officials
- Work with whatever organizations (if any) exist in your area for cyclists like a local bicycle coalition.
- Work with the neighborhood association/merchants association/etc... Your argument is that people wouldn't come back to an area to shop if their cars were regularly burglarized there and the same applies to many cyclists here.
- Try contacting local media. Maybe a TV station will be interested in sticking a hidden camera on the bike racks.

All that said, it's not clear whether this is one person who routinely hits this spot or, more likely, simply an example of property being left not nailed down in the open and a large assorted group of people stealing from it. The former is a problem that might be addressed by focusing police attention on that one thief, while the latter is a issue that boils down to "I would generally like less crime in this area." Less petty crime is a fine thing to want, but it's much less immediately achievable. If it's the latter, your time probably is better spent trying to come up with a solution that generally prevents these thefts rather than catching a specific culprit, such as working to get secured bike parking in the area (this is the kind of work a bike coalition often does).
posted by zachlipton at 3:21 PM on December 10, 2016 [1 favorite]


2nd-ing zachlipton, I suggest you don't want to catch them, you want to prevent them. If it's a regular event you go to, can you make up a schedule where someone hangs out in the bike parking area full-time, maybe rotating by the hour?
posted by ctmf at 3:25 PM on December 10, 2016 [2 favorites]


LOL are there any municipalities where the police care about bike theft? Filing a police report is a big ole recipe for absolutely nothing happening in any place I've ever lived. That is the reason bike theft is so common, no one cares, no one is going to go looking for your bike, no one is going to call you if they recover it. I don't think I know anyone who has ever gotten a stolen bike back EXCEPT by "vigilantism". Even here in my supposedly bike friendly liberal city, bike chop shops are blatantly run on every other corner and police drive past them all day.

Getting involved with your local bike coalition is surely a way to change this as a long term strategy, but it's not going to personally help anyone get their bike back if it gets stolen.

Bike theft is a crime of opportunity, if you catch them in the act and yell real loud they're not going to stick around. I've interrupted several bike thefts in progress, it works! No violence necessary. Bike thieves operate under the assumption that no one will say anything, even in broad daylight, and they are mostly right. So if you interrupt them they will just run. If you see someone with a bike you know is stolen, yelling real loud and/or offering them cash are two time tested strategies friends of mine have employed to get the person to give up the bike. If you see it on craigslist, offer to buy the bike immediately and show up with multiple friends (or a cop, if you can convince one to care) and inform them it's yours. If they don't hand it over immediately, refer to the previously time tested strategies (you met them somewhere public, right?).

Really the only thing you can do to fight bike theft locally is to create a network amongst local cyclists so that people can be on the look out for stolen bikes as soon as they are stolen, and hopefully those people will either yell/buy the bike back for you. Otherwise they will get fenced to people who move them immediately to a different market (it sometimes helps to watch the craigslist of cities within a few hours drive of you) or they will get chopped up with other stolen bikes and resold as quickly as possible on the street. Locally we have a couple of people who do social media updates, which are automatically pushed out to multiple networks/services/twitters/etc. followed by local cyclists. It works sometimes.
posted by bradbane at 4:25 PM on December 10, 2016 [2 favorites]


What about a highly visible cam with more lighting? Won't catch 'em, but maybe stealing will decrease.
posted by crankyrogalsky at 5:11 PM on December 10, 2016


The venue doesn't want to be involved because it wants to maintain a "bikes are parked at their own risk" policy, which, for the venue, makes very good sense. Bikes and bike parts are always going to be stolen at a high rate and they can't be sued for negligence every time it happens.

If the stolen stuff isn't showing up at bike shops and second-hand-good shops nearby, this is not stealing being done by a typical addicted / disordered transient, but by one or more people associated with a ring that transports the booty far enough way to be safely sold (who may hire one or more better-organized transients to do the lifting, but probably not). These people are every bit as violent as street drug dealers and you do NOT want to mess with them unless you have a SERIOUS desire to throw down with an armed felon. That's not advisable in Texas, to say the least of where you may be.
posted by MattD at 1:16 PM on December 11, 2016


Best answer: It's true I don't want to catch them, and don't want any kind of confrontation going on. I figured out a way I could possibly video people with my honeypot panniers but practically speaking I wouldn't want to out people in this way so that's probably not a good idea to do.
I went to this venue today and realized that one of my basic bike axioms is that if something on my bike isn't tied/latched/fastened to something else it's probably going to fall out or disappear. That can be extended to theft as well. If my panniers had been zip tied to my rack I would probably still have them.
In almost every case, out of sight means out of mind, or even the smallest precaution that prevents dead simple petty theft of parts will stop it.
This scenario is very low-level, not big time bike theft. We're talking cheap stuff that disappears, probably some homeless person needing panniers for their bike.
Asking the police to investigate stuff like this is a waste of time IMHO, also the venue. I didn't lose anything that would cause me to gnash my teeth at nights and all things considered it's a good lesson in not leaving stuff lying out in plain sight that's easy to take.
posted by diode at 6:29 PM on December 11, 2016 [1 favorite]


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