Actually it does make financial sense. Here's why. Bike theft in many places now has an enormous reward/risk ratio not because the reward is large but because the risk is so minuscule -- small enough to be considered zero. People tend to think that the police would have to solve and prosecute a large fraction of bike thefts to deter the crime effectively, but that's probably not true. Any chance at all of being caught would cut the reward/risk ratio by two or three orders of magnitude, at least. Because the reward for the crime is relatively small, compared to other things a professional thief could be doing, that is likely to serve as a sufficient deterrent in many cases.

I've read that this has been tried somewhere and seems to work, though I don't recall the details. A municipality just needs to dedicate a small fraction of its resources to solving as many bike thefts as possible. Even if that's a small fraction of the total, it can be enough to turn the tide.

Same problem with people hopping turnstyles in the 80's. They increased the severity of the punishment and lo behold the crime went down.

Some people were having trouble with guys on the corner smoking pot in the 80s. So we started the war in drugs. Lo And behold crime went down.... Oh wait..

I know you're being facetious, but it's much more difficult to evaluate risk/rewards ratio for drug use, and the motivation for engaging in it is less linked to this ratio than for other crimes.

Though I say that, and think back to Prohibition... which didn't involve the same addictive properties to which I'd attribute these properties of the War on Drugs, so I doubt myself.

I don't have answers either. You need punishment to prevent some crimes I think. But at some point it stops helping and it just hurts. Or perhaps we need another way to influence behavior. State mandated morality? Meh

Bikes are just like any other stolen item. They typically end up with brokers who warehouse and distribute these goods in ways that are hard to scrutinize. The problem is that there will always be crackheads and there will always be sketchy people that willing to transact stolen goods. Its like a cosmic-scale version of wack-a-mole.

The best way to deal with bike theft is for owners to get wise about how they store and lock their bikes. Some amount of common sense about bike choice helps too. If you can afford a $3000 bike you can also afford a secondary $100 bike that doesn't make bike thieves salivate while you're grocery shopping.

If the brokers aren't being found, the police aren't doing their job. GPS trackers for bicycles are now down to $47.[1] When you find more than one stolen bike at one location, you've got something.

This worked for cars. Lojack, with their hidden transponder, caused a significant reduction in auto thefts. Lojack claims a 90% recovery rate. The main problem for bicycles is battery life. Someone needs to design a system which needs almost no power until the bicycle is stolen.

Lojack, which is a pre-GPS technology, does something like that. Their unit normally isn't transmitting. It's just listening to FM broadcast station subcarriers for its own serial number. When a car with Lojack is stolen, Lojack, which is plugged into police stolen car databases, has their FM stations broadcast the serial number repeatedly. The addressed Lojack unit wakes up and starts transmitting. Lojack makes a deal with police departments to put Lojack receivers in police cars. These light up when there's a transmitting stolen car in range.

You could do this today by connecting a digital pager to a GPS/GSM location transmitter. The GPS/GSM unit is normally off, and only turns on when the pager wakes it up. You can get six weeks of standby time on a digital pager easily. Add a power-from-motion device and you could probably keep the pager running indefinitely, as long as the bike gets some use.

OK, IoT crowd, get moving.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Bicycle-GPS-Tracker-GPS305-Real-time/...

Heh, IoT.

Making bike thieves watch 30 seconds ads before they can disable the tracker would be vigilantism all right.

Car-theft is alive and still doing quite well in spite of lojack and other technologies. Admittedly, cars today are harder to steal for a wide variety of reasons.

Knowing approximately where the bike is is only 1/3 of the battle. You still have to physically put your hands on it and remove it from whoever has it. I applaud the intent of a bike "lojack" but good luck getting the police to lift a finger when your bike tells you where it is.

That 50 bucks is better spent on a good U-lock upgrade.

Between 1993 and 2012, Property Crime has fallen from a rate of 4740 to 2859 per 100,000 inhabitants in the US. 2012's rate was 60% of 1993's rate. Burglary from 1100 to 670 (61%) Larceny from 3034 to 1959 (65%).

Compared to those dramatic declines (and yes, 1993 was a pretty bad year for crime in the US, but that's the FBI's stats), motor vehicle theft has fallen off a cliff.

In 1993 there were 606 per 100,000 inhabitants. in 2012 there were 230. The new number is 38% of the old number.

I hear about fairly advanced car thefts in the UK all the time (RFID cloning, etc), but it's a problem that virtually doesn't exist anymore in the US in the eyes of car enthusiasts. (Yes, 20 year old Honda Accord parked in the ghetto is still a target. But modern vehicles in relatively good areas are simply not something we worry about anymore).

https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2012/crime-in-the-u.s.-...

In olden times, stealing a car was trivial. Ditto radios, which had resale value.

Now it's parts. Wheels, airbags, bumpers, etc.

It's also to provide untraceable vehicles for other crimes. My city has a huge carjacking problem right now, and most of them are used as get away vehicles in other crimes.

But we see a lot of smash the window and grab whatever bags are in the car in San Francisco.

I think a better variation of that idea is embedding (or welding on) some sort of RFID chip in the frame that could be reported stolen or reprogrammed with a long code. Then you could search for stolen bikes in public places or put a automatic reader with a large siren on public bike paths and parking spots. Basically DRM for bikes.

It's might be challenging to make something that is cheap, long range (for RFID) and tamper proof of course.

>embedding (or welding on) some sort of RFID chip in the frame //

Why not just a low tech BIN (Bicycle version of a Vehicle ID Number (VIN)) stamped in the frame on the upright. You could also have a QR version printed. A traffic warden then could scan a rack of bikes and find any "reported stolen" ones.

Bikes with no QR would look suspicious and you could check the BIN (as would QR-BIN not matching bike style, colour, location). The BIN could be changed, but then so could an RFID chip (or a tracker); ground off frames would also look suspicious and warrant additional investigation.

?

You'd have to convince bike manufacturers to add BINs to bikes, which is likely against their financial interests as they probably sell more new bikes if bikes are more often stolen.

Lojacks are trivial to remove. They are one of the first things experienced car thieves look for, remove and dispose of.

A GPS device on a bike will be the same thing. You can't embed it into the frame either, since you as the legitimate owner need to replace its battery every now and then, which means it needs to be easily removable.

>They are one of the first things experienced car thieves look for

If they are only effective against inexperienced car thieves, they still have value. It's like minor security measures that keep out script kiddies.

Perhaps use rechargeable batteries and inductive charging

Briefly hook the frame up to a car battery and be on your way.

Put it inside the down tube. These usually have holes for mounting bottle holders, so you could pass the charging wires through the holes, disguised as part of the bottle holder mounts. And you'd have to remove the bottom bracket to get it out, which is slow and inconvenient.

Every time you give advice like this, imagine giving the same advice to car owners.

"Sure, you can afford a $60k SUV, but you really should also have a $2k shitbox that you drive whenever you can't park it in a locked garage"

Also ask why you would ever walk into the garage and choose to ride the bicycle-shaped-object instead of the carbon fiber piece of artwork.

The solution to "nice things get stolen" is not "don't have nice things", it's "make it so people don't want to steal nice things".

When I want to ride a century on a nicely paved surface, of course I reach for the Cf frame.

If I'm just heading up to the store, my $100 pawn shop bike (which funnily enough was likely stolen since just the frame sells for 100+ on eBay) will do just fine.

For even sketchier times, like riding my bike to the local bar where they have no good place to lock up or I just don't feel like carrying a heavy duty lock, my Chinese made schwinn hybrid works nicely, handles variable road conditions perfectly, and I wouldn't shed a tear if someone stole it.

Usually if you are really into bikes you have at least 3, a "nice" expensive cf bike, a fixed gear you bought a steel frame on Craigslist and turned into a fixie, and a multi speed road bike that is for shorter rides or medium commutes but will be left in a shady area for a prolonged amount of time. you could either add or replace one of the former with a mountain bike. And that's just pretty much standard, not even getting into when people start collecting biked just because they like to have them around.

Also if you are like me or any of my cyclist friends, part of your living space looks like the back of a bike shop.

Cycling is an extremely satisfying hobby, and can be very cheap if you read up on what you should buy and spend a couple weeks with a discerning eye looking through local deals.

Also getting to know your local bike shop owner will do you more good than anything else. The guy down the street from me just opened his shop with himself and his wife. And they just do it for the love. He has never ever charged me for minor tuneups or servicing, even though his time is worth at least $50/hr and I would gladly pay.

He even traded a bike of similar value for free just because it fit me better than the one I had.

But because of his generosity I have directed multiple people to buy from him instead of a big box bike store.

These people are slowly getting driven out of business due to the internet, but they offer services that the internet simply can't (yet, I am sure there is some mobile bike mechanic app in SF but I live in a different metro.)

Especially for those starting out, some advice from a skilled mechanic will go a long way and save you a lot of money and pain in the long run setting you up with the bike you need (rather than upselling something you dont,) and more importantly, saving you pain in the long wrong setting you up with a bike that fits your body.

If anyone would like advice how to get into the hobby or as to which kind of bike to buy, feel free to ask me and I would be glad to point you in the right direction.

Actually, quite a lot of car-owners think exactly that way (albeit not because of theft concerns but more about damage, wear/tear, accidents).

In any case, a 60K vehicle is going to be significantly harder to steal and it will be far easier to get the police to pay attention to that theft than a 3K bike.

Here in the salty Midwest, "winter beaters" are a popular thing. Not that they defeat the cold and snow, but that they sacrificially get beat on when it's nasty out.

Keep gas-guzzling, 4-wheel-drive, wins-in-a-crash truck thing with rusted out underbody for December to March, and a nicer car that never sees salt for the warmer months. Exchange insurance from one vehicle to the other as necessary.

Indeed, I have a winter bike for this reason. And another bike for taking to higher theft / vandalism areas such as downtown and the university campus. Plus, admittedly, it's fun to tinker with and ride different bikes. ;-)

realistically what bicycle enthusiast only has one bike??

There's actually an entire category of bicycle enthusiasts who only have one bike. ;-)

That's pretty reasonable advice. Whenever we're going to leave the car parked on the street in the city overnight (or at least late at night), we drive the old car, rather than the newer nicer car (though we're talking $25K versus $5K). Makes our car less attractive to thieves, and we care much less if it gets some minor damage. I'd be surprised if either of our cars were ever stolen since they have transponder keys and I don't think tow-truck thefts are that common in this city. We're more likely to run into smash-and-grab thefts. (only happened twice over almost 10 years, nothing of value was taken, and the window "only" cost about $200 to replace)

For that same reason, I ride the cheap $500 commuter bike to work or the store, and save the $4000 nice bike for long rides where I'm not going to leave it unattended. (well, that and the commuter bike has a rack so I can easily carry more stuff) I did ride the nice bike to work a few times, and parked it at my desk.

Unlike bikes, older cars are much easier to steal though. In the UK at least car theft is now mostly restricted to cases where the keys are stolen from the house, because modern immobilisers are so effective.

Well it may be annoying advise, but it works. My wife and I have a nice, newer BMW that we take out to nice events, dinner, long trips etc. Then we also have a very cheap 20 year old Volvo that we run errands in, get groceries in, go to crappy neighborhoods with, let people borrow it, and things like that. It really is nice to have a car you don't care about. Volvo gets hit in a parking lot? Tell the other driver not to worry about it, shrug it off, and go on with your day. No big deal. It's really sort of liberating. That said, I don't bike much, but if I did, I could definitely see myself with a nice bike and a "junk" bike for similar reasons. Definitely pretty reasonable advice

But it doesn't have to be this way. I was in Copenhagen a few weeks ago. I couldn't get over the number of bikes parked overnight that were locked only to themselves. Many bikes simply had their U-lock run through their front tire as a deterrent to anyone who might ride off on it. The bikes weren't actually locked to anything at all. Amazingly, these bikes were still there in the morning. In Portland, none of those bikes would have lasted an hour "locked" like that.

Ask yourself "why is that?"

You see this in say, Amsterdam too. But it's not that the bikes won't get stolen, it's that eventually they absolutely will, and then you'll just buy another bike again for almost nothing (which was also probably stolen - or salvaged from the canal after it was stolen and dumped...)

Not all bikes, but the beater bikes in Amsterdam are all just rotating through the population. It's kinda like a game.

What percentage of Denmark's population is transient/homeless? People with nothing to lose are more likely to steal something.

That's a bit of my point. In America, we allow far too many to get to a place where they have nothing left to lose. I'm not sure if Basic Income is the answer. Perhaps an actual mental health system. Whatever the solution, the status quo in the USA is shameful.

Yeah, I'm definitely for an actual mental health system. As well as a free, robust, and easily available addiction treatment system. And an energetic program to get down-and-out people off the street and back into productive lives.

People inevitably say, "what will it cost?" But that ignores how much we spend now. Wasted lives, mangled minds, broken families that pass trauma and dysfunction to the next generation.

Having personally lost bikes and chased thieves, I applaud join this vigilante's efforts. But that can't be the only thing to do. No 7-year-old wants to grow up to be a meth-addicted bike thief. As doing a Five Whys teaches us, if you're serious about solving a problem, you have to attack multiple levels of causality at once.

Homeless guys aren't running the rings in Chicago where they steal 400 bikes, load a U-Haul, and drive them to the west coast to sell.

You're absolutely right that "it doesn't have to be that way". I don't know if its because everyone who wants a bike already has one (and thus re-selling isn't profitable) or if its because Denmark has fewer drug-addled fiends per capita, or if its because the cost of the grinding wheel to cut a u-lock exceeds the illicit resale value of a bike.

Whatever the case... a good ulock doesn't hurt even in Denmark.

I did hear there were quite a few bike thefts in Copenhagen. Neighbouring Norway has a national registry of bikes, which seems to be quite effective at lowering theft.

People that don't see themselves in their fellow citizen.

Almost every bike I saw in Japan had "self-locks" - these were usually built-in and just locked around the rear wheel.

Perhaps some culture war antipathy towards New Portland software engineering transplants (who I assume make up the bulk of such people in Portland, and I'm guessing you as well)? Though Portland isn't quite as expensive for cops to live in as SF.

unfortunately in my experience it doesn't matter if you have a $3000 bike or $100 bike if the crack head stealing the bike is only going to get $20 for it

There are two kinds of bike thieves, the kind that target any bike with weak security and sell it for $20 and the kind that are specifically targeting $3000 bikes in an organized fashion for whom no bike lock will be an effective deterrent if your bike is parked somewhere unattended for a long time or in the same place on a recognizable schedule.

Yeah, we had one of the latter kind get taken down here in Austin last year: http://keyetv.com/news/local/austin-police-arrest-man-connec...

Connected to 97 thefts of bikes valued from $1k to $12k, including taking only "the most expensive one" of the several owned by the fella interviewed in that story.

Although he really was exploiting a weakness, in that people figured their bikes would be safe in their closed-up garages. I wonder if a good lock would have been enough to make him move on to the next target on his list.

Maybe its just because I am a cyclist and have an emotional attachment to my bike (a 90s bianchi with campagnolo components that I paid $100 at a pawn shop for... which probably means it was stolen)

but I truly despise bicycle thieves.

Well, if your $100 dollar bike is locked-up with a beefy u-lock next to other $100 bikes with flimsy cable locks...

Someone posted a link in this thread about the Austin pd breaking up a bicycle theft ring.

The problem is, as with all theft, unless someone witnesses the crime as it is occurring by the time the cop gets to the scene it is too late to find the bike. Experienced thieves will scope out bikes ahead of time and have a place to stash them quickly, and even if the police do arrive quickly, are they supposed to interrogate every person on a bike to check if it is stolen?

Basically they need to focus on these theft rings that steal bikes en masse and move them to another region to sell.

I have on more than 3 or 4 times seen a truck with the bed FULL of bikes I'm talking stacked 6 feet high with a cage around the bed.

Where did all those bikes come from? And ive never seen a decent bike in the stack. Mostly children's bikes (easiest to steal as I imagine children don't secure their bikes very well) and Wal Mart beaters.

The usual way to find organised thieves is with a decoy bike in a high theft area, with surveillance and police lying in wait.

> are they supposed to interrogate every person on a bike to check if it is stolen?

This is what Japanese cops do. Every bike is registered to a name, and they radio to check the registered name and frame number against your id. It takes about five minutes. My bike has been stolen three times (probably by different people) and they recovered it twice and caught the thief the third time.

Wow, sounds like being a cyclist in Japan is hell. I've had a bike stolen, and it sucks, but not nearly as much as it would suck to be stopped by police all the time and expected to prove ownership of my bike.

It's a hassle, but the check is over in 5 minutes. Show your photo id (which Japanese usually carry, and foreigners are required to) and if the names match you're good to go. If the bike isn't reported stolen and your ID is good they'll send you on your way. If it's reported stolen you'll have to go to the police station to do some paperwork even if it is your bike.

New York had a big anti-vandalism push as part of Giuliani's "broken window" based campaign to clean up the city.

I think a probabilistic argument makes sense. You don't have to pursue 100% of bike thefts to discourage them.

On this scale, whether it makes financial sense shouldn't matter. Law enforcement is a public service, not a profit initiative.

No, economics still applies because we only have a finite amount of resources—funding, equipment, officers—and we need to distribute them intelligently to cover all the functions we expect from law enforcement. It wouldn't make sense for a small police department to spend $1 million on bike thefts which add up to $10,000 stolen a year (and nobody injured/killed): it would be a terrible use of tax dollars and would probably require neglecting other police duties.

Even though government service is not run for profit, it still has to deal with scarcity, so economic and financial considerations still apply.

Usually those problems have the same root. Denmark was mentioned. It is not like the allocated better, they do better in almost every regard.

I am asking this 100% seriously. I have never actually seen police helping anyone -- only seen them harrassing or extorting money (outright or via bogus traffic citations). I have come to the conclusion that the idea of a police force that is really there to help citizens may be a myth.