Stolenbicycleregistry dot com

One Good Story, One Bad Story

2009-07-15T08:40:00.000-07:00

For every good bike recovery we have, there's always a bad story to balance it out.

First, the good story:

Email: hello - looking at the stolen bike registry today, I noticed that I have your Sun recumbent in my possession. It was purchased by myself ... on July 18, 2008. ... My intention was to restore it and possibly give it over to my old man. It has been sitting like this for a while - an unfinished project. If you're still needing this bike, please send over your phone # so we can arrange an exchange.

Bike owner: Cool! That bike was primary transport for my stepson who has cerebral palsy -- which was why the brakes were modified. He only has use of his left hand. The bike was stolen from his place of work right out in front of the store in broad daylight.

I'm a big fan of this kind of recovery, because this bike has been on file for a while, and the owner actually had valid contact info - so it's a piece of cake to hook this up and scratch one off the list. A couple of emails, and this bike was returned. Yay!

Now for the bad one:

My name is (redacted), from the Netherlands. I was riding the US Coast to Coast tour on my bicycle. My plan was to end the trip in Astoria, OR. Unfortunately on Friday, July 10th, 2009 around 4:00 PM my bike, which was locked, was stolen from the front side of the Eugene, OR Public Library, 100 West10th Avenue, Eugene. Please contact me on e-mail I you might have information on my bike.

Bike specifications:
Make: Idworx, type Off Rohler
Frame ID: GK771051
Wheels front: SON dynamo hub with 26" Rim Rigida CSS
rear: Rohloff Speedhub 500/14, Rim Mavic
Brakes: Magura HS 33 Firm-tech
Tires: Schwalbe Marathon Extreme
Handlebar: Syntace VRO, adjustable handlebar system
Bags: Vaude panniers, silver colered (front, rear), Ortlieb Rack top bag, yellow.

To the asshat in Eugene, OR that stole this poor guy's bike - there is such a thing as karma, and you're pretty much F'd. Pray that we don't find you.

Local registries are popping up like crazy

2009-07-15T08:32:00.000-07:00

From "Bike Theft Deterrent Hits Web":

Memo to all bike thieves: The Hub is unveiling a new program today that will send out a virtual APB on social networking sites Twitter and Facebook whenever a bicycle is reported stolen in Boston. Bike owners are being asked to log onto a new city Web site, stolenbikesboston.com, to register the make, model, year, color and serial number of their bicycles, and upload pictures.

The site, stolenbikesboston.com, is also doing Twitter integration, which is interesting because I've been watching BikePortland.org's stolen bikes twitter feed for a while and it now has something like 127 followers. Lots of eyes out there looking for people's stolen rides!

At some point in the future I need to sit down and work out a specification that would let all of these various stolen bike registries 'talk' to each other and exchange data. It's going to be a problem if all these various Balkanized registries can't cross-check serial numbers with other websites, since more and more bikes are being shipped out of town for resale.

If I had any extra time on my plate, I'd put together a working group, but for now it'll have to wait. If you're out there and would be interested in working on such a project - especially landing some money to make it happen - drop me a line.

Now that doesn't happen every day ...

2009-06-25T16:24:00.000-07:00

Email to me this morning:

((redacted))@((redacted)), sent to me for the owner of bike 4314:
Could this bike be yours?: http://boulder.craigslist.org/bik/1238666942.html

My reply:

Thanks for the heads up. I have bcc:'d the registrant of bike #4314
here so they can check it out.
-bhance
-SBR

Response about two hours later:

((redacted))@((redacted))
I'll be looking at the bike later today and will check the serial number

Response about three hours later:

((redacted))@((redacted))
I had the police meet me when I met the seller, and the police found that it was indeed stolen out of Ft. Collins, CO. But it wasn't the one that was shown on your website

Me:

Oh man, wow. Score one for you :) Nice find!
-bhance
-SBR

A thousand little registries, blooming

2009-06-23T08:55:00.000-07:00

There's a few new bike registries popping up on the radar:

I recently wrapped up a WordPress plugin for BikePortland.org that lets people in Portland, Oregon register and list their stolen bikes in a small, bikeportland.org-local registry. Their bikes are then cross-listed in the SBR for better searching and recovery power!

I'm still beating the stupid out of the plugin (and if you've never tried WordPress plugin programming before, I suggest you start drinking before you do just to help ease the transition) but it has a lot of promise. Big ups to BikePortland for hooking the thing up and adding all kinds of Wordpress kung-fu, like Twitter integration. That's right - there's now a damn twitter page for stolen bikes in Portland, over at stolenbikespdx!

It also looks like the city of Austin, Texas will be hand-rolling their own local registry. There's a post up about this oncoming initiative over at the always-awesome ATXBS.com:

The City of Austin, Austin Police Department and the Public Works Department are in the process of implementing an educational campaign to foster camaraderie between the cycling communities and to assist in the safety awareness to cyclists, citizens and motorists. City departments have begun to examine ways to implement a voluntary web-based program that would be accessible to all users containing information on reporting bicycle thefts, registration, and safety procedures.

I spoke with a policy aide from Austin a while back about this and I'm way happy to see them moving forward with the idea. Individual cities and towns are much better equipped to handle things like 'pre-registration', i.e. registrations for bikes that haven't been stolen yet. And they're more prone to getting their own cops and other local law-enforcement types involved in the process, which is a huge help at the local level. And, hey, the more registries == more recovered bikes.

The one thing I've always asked people to do if they're going to go build a registry is to bake some interoperability into their system, so everybody's registries can 'talk' to one another. That way, if someone runs a serial number in the SBR, my website can 'ask' the city of Austin website if it has any bikes on file with the same serial.

This is actually a pretty easy thing to do (XML! API's! INTERNETS!!oneone!!111) and it prevents the 'balkanization' of whatever registries come online - and more importantly, it greatly increases the chance of getting your bikes back.

Finding your stolen bike on Craigslist

2009-06-21T16:07:00.000-07:00

I had an email a while back from Ian at NotifyWire.com, and I finally got a chance this weekend to sit down and put some thoughts together on his Craigslist search tool.

Notifywire, as you may have guessed, helps you scan Craigslist via a small client you run on your computer. Searches can also be saved as 'alerts', and you can tell Notifywire to drop you a line via text message/SMS whenever a new hit on one of your searches pops up. It's also easy to expand your searches to multiple cities, which is incredibly important when looking for stolen bikes - we've seen time and time again how many bikes pop up two or three major cities away.

There's a pretty comprehensive demo on Youtube that you can watch, too, that explains NotifyWire.com much better than I can.

From my perspective, this is a great tool for anyone looking to find their stolen bike on Craigslist. And, let's be clear on this - a lot of stolen bikes wind up on Craigslist. So many that I've all but stopped posting about stupid thieves getting caught on Craigslist, and only post the fantastic stories like Michelle's epic recovery, and those crafty Austin bike folks who both nailed bike thieves using CL.

I've been playing with NotifyWire for about a week now, using it to scan Seattle, Portland, and other Pacific Northwest listings for my friend's stolen Dahon. I've been pretty happy with it, it's a good flagger and easy to use after a couple of trial runs. And while I started out using Notifywire to look for bikes, I'll admit it, I started putting some searches together for cheap computer gear that I'm looking for. So it has definitely become another great tool to have in the toolbox, so to speak.

Ian gets another shout out for putting together a blog post titled "Finding Your Stolen Property Online", which includes a fantastic Youtube video showing you how to scan for your stolen stuff using Notifywire. (And yes, he drops a gratuitous link and some info about the the SBR in there, which is always appreciated. Thanks Ian!)

Long story short: If you're serious about finding your stolen bike, check out NotifyWire.com. And tell Ian I sent you!

Hey! Look! Two more idiots nailed on Craigslist

2009-05-13T08:04:00.000-07:00

Remember folks: If your bike gets stolen, keep checking Craigslist. From "Police Recover High-End Bikes":

Santa Rosa Junior College student Nica Poznanovich was heartbroken when she came out of class last Wednesday and found her prized racing bike gone...But she was back in the saddle Tuesday after Santa Rosa police broke up an alleged theft ring that was advertising stolen bikes on Craigslist.

Her $2,000 Bianchi bicycle was part of a cache of bikes recovered Tuesday when police arrested two Santa Rosa men and searched a home and storage unit.

Santa Rosa and SRJC police investigating a recent rash of bike thefts learned that someone was selling the stolen property on Craigslist, according to Santa Roa Police Sgt. Lisa Banayat... undercover detectives made arrangements to buy one of the advertised bikes and met Tuesday with two men, who also brought a second stolen bike, Banayat said.

Police arrested Mark Allen Jensen, 20, and Donald Andrew Bean, 18, both of Santa Rosa, on felony charges of possessing stolen property...Detectives then searched a home on Earle Street and a storage unit on Santa Rosa Avenue, finding more bikes and bike parts related to 14 different theft cases.

I can't tell you how common this is becoming - so I say again - if your bike gets stolen, keep on Craigslist. There are even Craigslist scanning tools like NotifyWire that will even do it for you, and send you a text message when it matches your searches.

Also, don't forget to check Craigslist for towns that are within a day's drive of your own - I have dozens of cases over at the SBR where people were stealing bikes in, say, Seattle, and then driving them down to Portland to sell. So expand your searches.

Another Craigslist idiot nailed.

2009-05-08T14:41:00.000-07:00

.... and the theif's ad - including his phone number - is still up on Craigslist. Woohoo!

From "Craigslist Ad Leads Bellingham Police To Alleged Bike Thieves"

BELLINGHAM — Two Bellingham men were arrested Thursday, May 7, after police discovered the pair had been stealing bicycles and selling them on Craigslist.
The investigation began when a woman, whose mountain bike had been stolen, told Bellingham Police she thought she saw the bicycle for sale on Craigslist, said Mark Young, police spokesman. An officer went to the Web site, tracked down the listing and ... called the phone number provided in the listing and set up a time with the seller to buy the bike.

The officer drove an unmarked patrol car to a local shopping center where he met Jeremy Randall Schuitema, 22, who came to the meeting riding the bike, Young said. The officer checked the serial number, which matched that of the woman’s missing mountain bike.
Schuitema was arrested. Further investigation led police to take David Jordan McDonough, 19, into custody as well, Young said. The pair eventually led police to their apartment where five other stolen bikes were found. All of the bikes were impounded as evidence.

I, personally like how this idiot's Craigslist ad - including his phone number - is still online. Way to go, genius.

You also have to love this idiot's added linguistic flair:

Bike is SICK! In great condition and has nothing wrong with it, im only selling cause i have a baby on the way and need the money

Yeah. You go, winner.

Here's an interesting blip

2009-05-01T14:34:00.000-07:00

Here's an interesting blip, from "Allston man stole bikes, locked them to Cambridge parking meters"

... detectives believe Cartagena used bolt cutters to steal the bicycles off city streets and then moved the bikes to other locations, locking them to meters and street signs with his own bike locks while he waited to sell the stolen goods.

...detectives allegedly noticed Cartagena had two sets of key rings with numerous keys on them, according to reports.... Cartagena gave police the key rings and Detective Mui used the keys to open another lock on a bike tied to a street sign in the area of Hovey and Magnolia avenues... Detective Mui told the Chronicle he walked around the area with Cartagena’s keys for several hours and was able to unlock nine more bikes.

Note the use of stash/drop spots and the fact that this guy had multiple keys and bolt cutters. There's actually a quick blip in the video that contains a shot of this guy's uber-keyring.

The multiple-keys thing doesn't pop up that often, but it would be worth looking into lock variation among manufacturers, i.e. how effective this actually is. If it were, the guy wouldn't need the bolt cutters.

Also, here's a video from wickedlocal.com:

Cambridge detectives bust thief with 12 high-end bikes from Erin Smith on Vimeo.

Score One For Us

2009-04-28T14:39:00.000-07:00

From "Tempe Campus Bike Thief Sentenced To State Prison":

An Arizona judge sentenced a 49-year-old Phoenix man to more than three years in state prison last week for theft and trafficking of bicycles stolen from ASU’s Tempe campus, ASU Police Cmdr. Jim Hardina said on Monday.

Donald George Candea was arrested on Feb. 26 after ASU student James Weiser located his own stolen bike on Craiglist and helped to thwart a trafficking operation on campus.

Following on the heels of Michelle's epic Craigslist recovery (which got a nice fat mention in The Stranger) it has been a good couple of weeks for catching thieves ...

Also, thanks to Marti for pointing me towards The Problem of Bicycle Theft, from the Center for Problem-Oriented Policing.

It's pretty hard to nail down a well-written, comprehensive look at the bike theft problem - let alone find one with references - which is why this is my favorite link for a while. Covers everything from locking schemes to RFID to registries. Good stuff.

Michelle's Epic Story Of Bike Recovery Win

2009-04-13T19:10:00.000-07:00

This is a story of one person's epic bike recovery. It is waaaay too long and detailed to reprint here, but I wanted to point it out because it illustrates a lot of the major hurdles I'm trying to address with the SBR.

In short:

-Michelle gets her bike stolen.
-Michelle goes on a PR and Craigslist rampage to find her bike.
-Michelle finds her bike on Craigslist. 175 miles away, in Portland.
-Michelle and friends bait the fishy, fake-name-using Craigslist asshat who has her bike.
-The Craigslist asshat gets spooked and sells her bike to someone else.
-Michelle and friends go totally flipped out, ninja-deathsquad on the guy, find him and gets the cops involved. Cops already know him! ZOMGLOL.
-After nine billion years of burreaucratic runaround, Michelle gets her bike back.
-The craigslist asshat is charged with theft and everybody wins.

And that's the short version. There's miles more that I can't even begin to cover in her full explanation, including the part where they find Craigslist Asshat's ad (on Craigslist, natch) seeking " ... a good Christian lady to straighten him out" and where Craigslist asshat threatens to sue them. For libel and defamation. Srsly.

My point is this: Michelle's story hits upon a lot of the issues that I'm trying to help address with the SBR, like bikes moving cities. Lack of central registration. Red tape with cops. Lack of universal searching ability, and so on.

I'm glad Michelle got her bike back, and she gets free Death To Bike Thieves stickers.

p.s. See also: Cycle of Justice in Seattle's The Stranger
p.p.s. Also - there's a fantastic radio interview with Michelle over on Too Beautiful To Live!

KVUE Austin On Bike Theft

2009-03-31T09:12:00.000-07:00

Interesting blip from KVUE Austin, with on a video of a building maintenance worker catching two bike thieves in the act and then mixing it up with them a little bit before one of them pulls a knife.

In light of the asshat who was ripping of high end bikes in the Pearl district in Portland, it looks like condo and residence storage lockers are the new target of choice for these guys ...

Serial numbers nail a bunch of thieves in Colorado Springs

2009-03-26T10:54:00.000-07:00

Just another tidbit re: a bunch of thieves/idiots in Colorado Springs. (From "Serial Number, Not Locks, Was Bike Thieves Undoing")

Couple of interesting points in here are in noted in bold.

A bicyclist who took the rare step of reporting a serial number after his bike went missing earlier this year helped police disrupt a theft ring targeting Colorado College and downtown Colorado Springs, an investigator said.

Police found the ID number during a routine search of sales records from El Paso County pawnshops. The records led investigators to the seller and four other people they believe acted as accomplices in the yearlong thefts.
...
The arrests on Tuesday ended the search for 64 stolen bicycles that went missing over the past year, many of them high-end brands including Specialized and Gary Fisher that can sell for hundreds and even thousands of dollars apiece, police said.

The thieves mixed and matched bicycle parts to avoid detection - swapping gear sets, derailleurs and shocks - before selling the bicycles on the street or at pawnshops.

The theft ring did not involve Internet sales, and Schiffelbein said there was no evidence it had ties to other cities in Colorado.
...

Their approach varied, police said, but one or more often approached locked bikes in well-lit areas and used bolt cutters to break through bicycle locks. A file could get through a cable lock in a matter of seconds, police said.

The pawn shop angle is an interesting one because cops have a lot of leftover registration/identification rules specifically for pawnbrokers and the like to combat this problem. These idiots probably would have been better off using Ebay ...

James Clayton / James Hogue is the story that keeps on giving

2009-03-05T13:28:00.000-08:00

Jesus! This is the just story that keeps on giving.

(update: bah, red herring, apparently. See the note @ the bottom of this post)

Remember 'James Clayton'? The (alleged) bike-thief/asshat that the Austin bike community just popped for allegedly befriending people with nice bikes so he could break into their homes to steal them? The one who's still in jail?

As it turns out, James Clayton just might be James Hogue, a damn-near celebrity fraudster and con man best known because he once fraudulently entered (and defrauded) Princeton University by posing as a self-taught orphan.

What's odd here is that the only mention of this connection seems to be a comment on the atxbs.com "wall of shame" -- I don't think the media has picked this up yet, which is interesting because this guy is practically the king of identity fraud and theft. Bike theft just seems to be this guy's thing.

Just ask the New York Times. Or Wikipedia. Or perhaps you'd like to just rent Con Man, the movie that presents "intimate and disturbing profile of ... elusive con artist" James Hogue. Or perhaps you'd just like to pick up a copy of "The Runner", a book by David Samuels that details how James Hogue's massive, sprawling lie of a false life came undone when he was CAUGHT FOR HAVING A BUNCH OF STOLEN GODDAMN BICYCLES.

Hell, I was living in Tucson when this guy got nabbed by the US Marshals for a bunch of theft and fraud warrants out of Colorado - where he had previously been arrested for .... wait for it .... BIKE THEFT. I remember this, it was a big deal then, and I remember reading about his fake life as the runner and track star Alexi Santana at Princeton.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that once you've had a book and a movie and a bunch of press coverage about your life of crime in the New York Times about your life as a con man, you've got some cojones or a severe lack of grey matter to keep on being a goddamn con man.

So: Is James Clayton really James Hogue? Let's take a look at con man James Hogue's mugshots:

Compare these with the recent mugshots of 'James Clayton':

... you have to admit, there's something there.

The guy's court date is Friday, March 6th. Grab some popcorn, folks, 'cause this is going to be something.

03/06/2009 Update: Andrea Ball of the Austin American-Statesman dropped me an email reply to a question I ran by her re: this possibility - and says James Hogue is still in jail. Thanks Andrea :)

Guess I'll get my tinfoil hat back out.

Images from:
http://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/6780316/detail.html
http://www.atxbs.com/?q=node/655
http://www.atxbs.com/?q=node/406

Hunting down the owner of a found LOOK

2009-03-03T15:00:00.000-08:00

Every now and then I get an email from someone who finds a bike and needs some help in locating the rightful owner.

This is the exception to the rule, natch, and not a primary goal of the website. But it demonstrates several parts of the bike theft and recovery equation that I'd like to talk about ...

All this week I've been working on locating the owner of a stolen LOOK carbon fiber [[model redacted]] racing bike found outside of Austin, TX. Long story short, there's an honest guy who found this insanely expensive, kitted-out LOOK bike stashed in the weeds on a rural field in the middle of backwoods nowhere Texas. Thinking that it was likely stashed there by someone waiting to come back and get it, this guy loaded it up, took it home, and started looking for an owner.

He tried the cops, and got nowhere there. He tried some local shops and a biking friend, who "posted it online" with no results. (Turns out this friend's entire post was "Anybody missing a LOOK? Friend of mine found one." I found the original post. Not such a great help, actually ...)

I got an email re: this bike about 7 days ago. Now, this is easily a $3k bike gone missing, so somebody out there has to be looking for it. Since contacted I've posted it to Atxbs, TXRBA, and Craigslist for Dallas/Austin/Houston, along with about a half dozen other smaller websites and biking forums.

(Little known fact, by the way - many carbon fiber bikes (and high end bikes in general) don't have serial numbers. Needless to say this makes recoveries way more difficult...)

So the word's out there, and we have all kinds of identifying details about the bike - this thing should be a slam-dunk recovery, right?

Unfortunately not.

So far we've had about a dozen inquiries, a couple of near misses, and a couple of wrong models/wrong color mismatches.

What depresses me (besides the asshats that accuse me of posting this just to get website traffic - those guys can go f themselves) is all the email people have sent me that doesn't have to do with this bike. The people sending me info about their own missing bikes is now three to one up on the inquiries about this stand-out bike that we actually have. I have five or six emailes re: other missing carbon fiber bikes, two re: store break-ins, and two or three re: bikes taken from inside people's homes.

Combine this with that James Clayton idiot they nailed in Austin and, man ... all I can say is that the situation's a lot worse than I thought.

And let's not forget the Craigslist scammer asshats who try and pry just enough information out of you so they can claim their 'lost' bike. Tell Craigslist responder A that it's a Grey model 1337-X - a model that doesn't even exist - and in half an hour you'll have Scammer asshat responder B emailing you and asking if you've found his Grey 1337-X.

I hate these people, and someone should find them and neuter them with a fork for wasting everybody's time and generally being lazy, moronic thieves.

Meanwhile, we'll keep looking for the owner of this LOOK. If you know anybody missing a LOOK within, oh, 100 miles of Kingsbury, TX, drop me a line.

Jeez- even lance Armstrong needs the SBR

2009-02-15T13:34:00.001-08:00

From "Lance Armstrong's Bike Stolen in Sacramento":

Lance Armstrong's one-of-a-kind time trial bike was stolen in Sacramento. The seven-time Tour de France winner and self-described full-time cancer fighter is now offering a reward for its return. Police said four bikes, including Armstrong's, were stolen from a Ryder rental truck that was parked in an alley.

Armstrong posted a picture of his stolen bike on his twitter page and said, "There is only one like it in the world therefore hard to pawn it off. Reward being offered."

Some moron thief out there now has possession of the most un-sellable bike in the history of stolen bikes. Also, he gets the honor of being the d*ck that stole Lance Armstrong's bike.

(Correction: you're the d*ck that stole Lance Armstrong's bike - and got caught on videotape while you did it, moron)

All kinds of great stuff going on

2009-02-13T09:03:00.000-08:00

Lots of bike-theft news going on this week - the future's looking pretty interesting!

First up: someonestolemybike.com - humanizing the impact of bike theft via online video.

"Everyone on planet Earth has had their bike stolen at some point - this website is dedicated to cataloging every one of those stories. We have about 20 so far."

Check their stories out - good stuff.

Next up - sweet goddamn Jesus I cannot wait to find this, somehow, somewhere - Gone in 60 seconds.

Even though this is from 2007, wow, check out their trailer:

Info and more trailers here. Surely this has to be on Bittorrent somewhere (?)

James Clayton, of Austin TX is pretty much f'd from here on out

2009-02-05T10:17:00.000-08:00

Methinks someone in Austin, TX has a very, very high chance of getting his ass kicked in the next few days.

Everbody, meet James Clayton. James just got thrown in jail in Austin, TX because cops just found $60k worth of stolen high end bikes in his possession.

James also has outstanding warrants for - you guessed it - bike theft! In good ol' Maricopa County, Arizona. And California.

What makes this story unusual:

a) James was a well known, apparently very public member of the biking community - guy even worked in a local bike shop.

b) Cops say Clayton would specifically "...befriend Austinites with expensive bicycles only to break into their homes to steal them later. "

Read that one again ...

So, just to recap: there's a whole bunch of folks in Austin, TX who knew this guy well and thought this guy was their friend. And they all just found out he broke into their homes and stole their bikes. And now they all know he's in jail - until, of course, he gets out.

I sent out an email alert to everybody in August who has registered a bike with the SBR since October 2008, so hopefully we'll clear a few of those off the list.

Have a good week, James Clayton - and good luck, because karma's a bitch.

Followup: Austinonwheels.org and atxbs.com, who nailed the guy in the first place, have more info on this guy ... not to mention this epic thread of win. (i.e. whoa) (... aaaaaand more followup)

Up ... up ... and away ....

2009-01-26T09:09:00.001-08:00

Here's a neat new take on an existing idea: Bikes in the Sky

London design student Dominic Hargreaves has seemingly solved the world's bike theft concerns with a winning design in the iQ Design Challenge at the Royal College of Art. If his invention rides into production, it could be an important advance in transportation security as the world goes fit and green turning to bicycles for exercises and energy conservation.

There's more info @ Royal College Of Art's website.

There are a handful of companies that make bike parking "trees" that hoist bikes skyward on a somewhat similar manner, but this seems to be the smaller home version.

Personally, while I think it's a neat idea, I think it's still vulnerable - hoisting without locking is a little too tempting, especially if there's any kind of balcony/stairwell/drainpipe nearby that can be used for access. I've heard stories of thieves scaling up three stories to get to balconies with unlocked bikes on them.

If this also combined a locking mechanism of some sort, I'd be more behind the idea, but it's a neat take on the problem.

"Fireman catches thief riding his stolen bike"

2008-12-23T13:56:00.000-08:00

So this is kind of funny:

"A Clinton man is now facing felony charges after the assistant chief with the Clinton Fire Department, while on duty, spotted a man riding a red mountain bike — his red mountain bike.
...
Solice was operating his emergency response vehicle in the area of Barden and Calhoun streets when he saw a bicycle that looked like his, being ridden by another man. When officers arrived, (he) was adamant that he was the owner of the property and the subject
...
told police he was homeless and unemployed. He could not tell them how he paid for the bicycle or who he bought it from, or give a description of the person,
...
Underwood was later approached by officers for a second time after they saw him riding the same bike around Barden and Williams streets. He told officers he was “high” the previous night and admitted to the theft of the bicycle."

You know ... I have nothing against homeless people. And I have nothing against people with drug problems. But if you're homeless, high, and riding my stolen bike, you're getting beat.

Speaking of 'building a better bike lock'

2008-11-07T08:39:00.000-08:00

Speaking of Building a Better Bike Lock - Mike Lambourn's SmartLock is a step in the right direction:

From his website:

SmartLock is a cable lock that has cores of compressed air and liquid running through its body. If cut, the liquids spray out over the perpetrator, his tools, the bike and the scene of the crime. A bike that has been stolen will be covered in coloured dye (the dye renders the bike undesirable and therefore unsellable) as well as transluscent Smartwater - an invisible forensic property marking liquid.

I'd want to check the technology out a bit more to make sure there's no way of this pressurized beast exploding on me when I've got the thing in my messenger bag, but hooray for active theft deterrence!

As a followup - Sweet jesus, see also www.bikeoff.org, which I just ran into after poking around his website a bit more. These are some folks I need to get in touch with, pronto.

Building a better bike lock

2008-09-27T17:15:00.000-07:00

Thoughts excerpted from an email exchange:

> what is your suggestion to minimize theft or vandalism? Whats the best lock
> or cover? what is the average (thief) profile?

Actually, I've been thinking about locks a lot lately...

Around here (I'm now in Portland, Oregon, USA) almost everybody uses "U locks" that look like this: http://www.jayscycles.com/ali%20baba%20u-lock.jpg

These locks are pretty hard to break, but even these have problems, mostly because a biker has to carry this extra heavy lock around with them, use special keys, they can only lock 1 wheel unless they buy 2 of these locks, etc. (And road bikers, of course don't like carrying anything heavy when they're biking)

What ends up happening:

1) A lot of people don't use them when they think their bike is located somewhere 'safe', which makes theft really easy. Lots of bikes get stolen from garages, from inside cars, apartments, offices, etc.

2) People lock the front tire with a U-lock, which is good -- but then the back tire gets stolen.

3) People use 2 of these locks - one for the front, one for the back - which ends up being a hassle, extra weight, 2 sets of keys, etc.

> or cover? what is the average thief profile?

Lots of them are petty thieves - many of them are drug users looking for things they can sell quickly. Around here, crack cocaine and crystal meth use drives a *lot* of theft - things like bikes, car radios, cellphones, laptop computers - anything small and easy to steal and sell real fast.

Some thieves are more professional, and steal bikes (or buy them cheap from the drug users) and then "chop them" and sell their different parts, usually online. *TONS* of stolen bikes here end up getting sold online, or trucked to the next city and sold there to keep them from being identified. (This is why I'm focusing on serial numbers with the SBR)

But most of them are just opportunistic idiots - people who brute-force locks off with pliers or cut cables, or drive around in trucks looking for 'easy' bikes to steal.

I've been thinking a lot about something that would be simple, strong, but integrated into the bike itself to help combat bike theft.

Basically if something could be built into the bike to make it more difficult to move, use, or disassemble, then people would use it more -- either on its own or in combination with a traditional lock.

Think of a motorcycle's steering lock - it's an extra (relatively) cheap lock than prevents the motorcycle from being driven by locking the whole steering assembly into position. Something like that, but for a bike, would go a long way.

The best things I have seen so far that speak to this kind of thing are:

1) This AXA integrated rear wheel lock: http://austinbikeblog.org/?p=139

2) This genius integration: http://www.flickr.com/photos/bikeportland/2252610299/in/set-72157603871477660/

The second link makes security part of the bike itself - since it makes it hard to remove the lock without destroying or mangling the bike. I like this because it follows a nice philosophy - security shouldn't be something you have to add as an extra, it should be worked into the concept of the thing itself.

If you've ever read or heard of security researcher Bruce Schneier (see: schneier.com), this is something he writes about extensively - how often the best security solution isn't the expensive or complex one, but one that is so deceptively simple and central that it atacks the *reason* someone wants to steal something, instead of their *ability* to steal it.

In this case, the reason they want to steal a bike is for profit. But if the act of theft damages the bike to the point that the effort outweights the profit, there is no incentive to steal that particular bike.

Personally, I've been thinking along these lines:

Would it be easy to add something to a bike that would make it so annoying and difficult to disable or remove that the cost would outweight the benefit?

Think: somehow working a key lock into the crankshaft. If a rider could reach down and lock a bike's crankshaft as well as lock it to something safe, then a thief couldn't actually pedal away. They would have to move the bike by hand, which is more difficult.

Think: somehow working a lock into the back hub, which would lock the gears and prevent the back wheel from spinning. If disabling this lock also somehow disabled or broke the gears, then thieves would get less economic benefit from a stolen bike because they would have to fix the damage.

Think: could a lock be integrated into the frame itself? Something that could fold out of a downtube, on a hinge or swivel, and be folded back into the frame when it isn't in use?

Think: what if there were a key-like metal insert that has to physically be inserted into the back hub for the gears to engage? And a biker could pull this out and take it with them when they locked their bike.

-bhance, SBR

Interesting blip on the radar ...

2008-09-22T20:10:00.000-07:00

Today's NYT ran this interesting blip: Battle Over Stolen Goods Sold Online Goes to Washington. It's all about the 'E-fencing act of 2008', aka HR 6713

"The bills, proposed and backed by bricks-and-mortar retailers like Wal-Mart Stores and Target, would require that online marketplaces like eBay and Overstock.com promptly investigate and pull down listings when retailers provide “credible evidence” that merchandise is stolen. The bills also make it a felony to sell stolen items online and give retailers new rights to sue Internet companies in federal court if they fail to respond or promptly take down stolen merchandise from their sites. "

As the article and comments point out, this bill is more geared towards people selling stolen and knockoff goods (Think: watches, DVD's and handbags) -- but it got me thinking about the stolen bike problem.

What pisses me off here is that it's a) retailer-centric and b) goes after the online services, instead of the actual damn thieves. We constantly find people on Ebay and Craigslist selling stolen bikes and bike gear - and we see about zero help from either one. Ebay's turned into a #$^%ing cesspool - at this point I could start an account selling stolen human livers and it'd probably take them three weeks and five transactionsbefore they shut my account down. From what I've seen and heard from SBR users, a lot of small-time stuff is now flying under the radar.

And Craigslist, for as touchy-feely of a reputation as it has had in the past, has gone off the rails with respect to black- and grey-market sales. In the ultimate of d*ck moves, at one point they even threatened another anti-bike-theft site I've spoke to with legal action -- for caching Craigslist pages. Do you hear me, Craig? Not. Cool.

What hurts here is that even the most basic authentication and verification controls would stop a lot of what's killing both of these services. And yet they resist. Best of luck to the many competitors popping up that seek to beat them at their own game by tackling this kind of thing. Right now Im' still convinced that the best hope in the fight against bike theft still lies with community-driven services like the SBR and the excellent finetoothcog.com

Five Lessons To Be Learned From Canadian Uber-Bike Thief Igor Kenk

2008-07-30T15:15:00.000-07:00

By now the whole world has learned about Igor Kenk, the Canadian bike shop owner caught up in a massive bike theft sting. At last count, Kenk had over 3000 stolen bikes stashed in multiple storage units around the city. It has been a week and cops are still recovering bikes that Kenk had stashed in storage. And now it looks like Kenk's wife - a respected concert pianist and Juilliard grad - has been dragged into the mess as well, since she's now facing drug and stolen property charges. Way to go, Igor!

This story has been getting progressively worse - fueled partially by Kenk's own profanity laden tirades on bike ownership and rightful recovery and the rest of the world's desire to burn him at the stake. We'll keep an eye out and see what kind of sentence this guy gets.

In the meantime, there are a five lessons this whole stupid ugly thing can teach us about bike theft:

1) The Community Always Knows The Bad Apples
Read the comments on these stories and you'll see that Kenk's shop was known locally as a dirty shop for a long time, to the point that locals would joke about having to ".. go to Igor's within two to four hours .. " after a bike theft. Cops: listen to your local bikers. They know what's what.

2) Thieves Regularly Chop and Disfigure Bikes To Mask Their Origin
I know most of you are saying "well, duh", but it bears repeating that the frame serial number is often going to be the only thing you can go by, especially when asshat thieves admit that they alter the bikes they steal to mask proper identification. This is why the SBR focuses on serials, even though we'd like to be able to recover components, too.

3) Drugs Are Almost Always Part Of The Problem
When police raided Kenk's homes and storage facilities, they not only found thousands of bikes - they found a kilo of blow, crack, and 17 pounds of weed.

I've written about the link between bike theft and meth before, but it bears repeating - these petty theft rings often exchange drugs for bikes. Any cop chasing bike thieves is likely to get a nice drug bust thrown in for free. (update: Not to mention art theft!)

4) Current Laws On Resale and Recovery Aren't Helping Anybody But Thieves
Part of the reason guys like Kenk even exist is because the laws on bike recovery are flawed. Kenk himself details how he skirted around the local three week recovery laws by hiding bikes in storage to let them 'cool off'. These loopholes aren't helping anybody but the thieves.

5) Finally: There Are Good Guys In This Fight, Too
Hats off to Consts. James Rowe and Craig Meredith, the cops running the bait bike program that caught Kenk red-handed and brought about his bust. Their bait-bike work landed much bigger haul than I think even they expected, racking up 60 charges at last count, and they're part of the good fight. Thanks guys!

'Sharia Law For Bike Theft'

2008-07-24T12:31:00.001-07:00

Nice. I could actually get behind this...

Here's the full article.

Do Not Do This

2008-07-21T16:29:00.000-07:00

.. but if you do, let me know how it works out for you: