Seattle vigilante reuniting stolen bikes with their owners
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
This rings true to me. I once rented a bike during the second week I lived in a particular city, while I was waiting for my bicycles to be shipped. That bike got stolen, largely thanks to the shitty lock the bike shop included in the rental. I wouldn't be surprised if that shop just bought the bike back from the thief, after charging me the new price for a seriously used POS bike, but I certainly didn't darken their door again.
Later on, after I had lived in that city for a year or so, an admitted bike thief told me straight up, "oh yeah we know that bike is yours and we see you around all the time and you seem ok so we probably wouldn't ever mess with it."
Thanks, I guess?
Seriously though, GPS receivers and GSM radios are a few dollars each these days. Seems like an easy thing to hide in the frame (of course a thief could still part out everything except the frame)
For ultralight racing bikes, definitely not, but those are probably a minority even in cycling-friendly cities like Seattle.
But if the police does not care, it is not useful.
Or use BLE and an accelerometer. If your phone isn't in range and the bike is moving then starting tracking.
I haven't done the math but you could probably get away with recharging every 6 months or so.
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% duty cycle, and drop off over time? (Clock drift shouldn't be a problem. The device has GPS, so it has an accurate clock)
And you need to filter that 'motion detected' thing, or your bike will keep resetting itself, even before it can check the BLE connection. Or is that something that the sensor ICs can do for you, too, nowadays?
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.
Not true, there are multiple battle-tested solutions out there, like these: www.spybike.com
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 definitely on the lookout for any replacements.
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.
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.
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 him the serial number. (Guys like this do not get enough props. He does it because it's just the right thing to do.)
I have never used his services, but have had bikes stolen. I've literally given up. My bikes are now pretty much throwaway. If they are stolen, it's no big deal. I want to buy a motorcyle this summer, but theft is first feature on my mind.
Would I prosecute a bike thief? If I felt they were professionals--yes. If, I thought it was a yuppie, who gets a rush out of stealing--yes. If it was a homeless person--no.
I saw a great deterrent to bike theft at Target. Outside the store they had these little pods you put your bike in. You supply the lock. They take up too much room for most businesses though, but they look like you could stack them two units high?
New service like uber: "rent a 350 pound Samoan"
VC money please!
I'll take some equity for the name.
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.
No, it just has to be around the object. Try wrapping your cellphone in aluminum foil. It won't receive or send anymore.
Someone once stole my iPhone 5. I had find my iPhone enabled, and the phone was locked down. The thief began texting me from his own phone, demanding ransoms ranging from $100-$1000 for the return of the phone, while aggressively threatening to throw my phone into the Potomac.
So I called the police.
I reported the theft, and the address of the thief's residence, and the fact that the phone was tracked by GPS. They transferred me to a Detective, who told me that they would file a stolen property report.
Throughout the week, I continued to receive increasingly erratic messages from the thief. The one consistent message was that if I didn't pay, he was insistent on throwing my phone into the river.
So I arranged to meet him at my bank at the Dupont Circle branch (a busy location with guards.) I would make out a check to cash for $200, he would give me my iPhone, and I would stick around until the check was cashed.
So when he arrived (we arranged to meet via picture exchange, so I had that as well as evidence), the thief approached me at the bank door. There was a police car immediately outside the bank, and I shouted to the officer "HELP!"
The man ran.
I went to the officer and said, "That man stole my phone!" Instantly, he jumped in his vehicle, told me to hop in the passenger seat, and we took off down P street. The officer stopped the car, sprinted after the thief, and he obeyed the cop's order to stop.
The man was taken to jail for theft and resisting arrest.
I said I didn't want to press charges as he was obviously severely disturbed. I asked if he could be given rehabilitation or treatment. They said they would place him on a 72-hour psychiatric hold.
As far as I know, that maybe only got him a shower, a few meals, and three days in a psych ward at GW Hospital, but I thought it better than anything else I could do.
I still wonder if I could have done something else to help the guy.
But the real moral of my story, is that even with a GPS beacon, it can be very very difficult to get the police to recover stolen property.
I would no more refuse to help a mentally ill person than I would refuse to perform CPR on a person having a heart attack.
They didn't choose to be this way.
So are you saying pretty words to make yourself feel better while trying to put me down, or do you actually go and seek out mentally ill people to help out on some regular basis? And given how grand your words are, I'm not going to be satisfied with merely giving some people a buck every so often.
I fully expect those are empty words. I am not impressed. You are not virtuous for saying them.
I'll repeat: It makes no moral sense for someone committing a crime against you to create obligations on you. It is a bonus above and beyond what you are obligated to if you help them.
"Do unto others as you would have them do unto you," is a good secular rule as well as religious.
I believe we'd be better off as a society if more people simply helped, as best they can, when the situation presents itself.
But you're not obligated to help, in my view, or especially not to seek out opportunities to help.
I suppose I just don't see it as an imposed obligation, but a chance for charity, even a little bit.
As far as morality goes:
Theological: Failure to help is a sin of omission, as it violates the Golden Rule. (Christian version, but there are many other examples in the major religions.)
Political: Locking someone up with other criminals creates a greater cost to society than psychiatric treatment.
Secular: Unreciprocated generosity relieves suffering. It can also lead to an improvement in reputation.
We could discuss each moral foundation in detail, from St. Augustine to Singer if you'd like.
As for my personal experience with mental illness:
I was able to convinve my cousin, who was in full blown psychosis, to get to a hospital (way harder than it sounds.)
I spent most of my childhood helping to care for my uncle, both physically and mentally disabled.
Also, I do volunteer work regularly for the homeless, many if not most of whom are mentally ill, in my home city of Washington.
Morality is situation specific, OP was there, perhaps if you were there you would have done the same.
There may have been other people whom most anyone would press charges apon.
Revenge is a dry & tasteless dish against some. Some deserve justice, some need only pity and help. Rehabilitation is logically better than punishment. One case is unlikely to alter overall deterrance. Thus each case should be judged on its merits.
Perhaps the guy's obvious disturbance was a ploy to fool the OP, luckily the cops could assit in this judgement with assesment.
This is the failure of Zero tolerance, when it produces obvious injustice. Equally this is the greatness of a judiciary who weight not only guilt but intent and circumstance.
The only bad or anti-social thing, is abrogating personal responsibility. Such as avoiding Jury Duty. Asimov's 1st law shows both an action or inaction that cause harm are equivalent.
There is a cost to refusing to press charges, paid by his future victims.
I assure you, he was not.
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 point A to point B just as well as a Cadillac, but a doubling in the price point of a bike (esp. 500 to 1000 range!) has a massive impact.
Of course there are people who buy racing bikes and ride them a few times a year. But those people rare enough that it doesn't make sense to spend the money designing and stocking a product just for them. And anyways, the guy on the sales floor is probably going to be the most important factor in their purchasing decision.
Yes and no. If you ride that much, you won't be riding a shitty bike. However, it is NOT the case that if you ride that much, riding a "non-shitty" bike means you ride an expensive bike. Bike manufacturers would love for you to think that you need to pay a lot to get a decent bike, but it isn't true. You can easily spend $50 to $300, trick out the components for another $50 to $200, and have a _fantastic_ ride that can beat the pants off of most bikes out in the wild, including bikes that cost thousands. And, the more you ride and the longer you've been riding, the more likely doing this comes easily.
But the people with the skill-set and interest in doing that are going to do so anyways; I don't see how anti-theft tech would convince that type of person to shell out an extra few hundred for a bike. They would just buy something and install it themselves.
I just don't see the market for integrated anti-theft. Seems more like a custom component type of thing.
Mandatory serial numbers, and make it illegal to purchase or own a bike without a serial number, or to buy a stolen serial number.
It's called a frame number, and is stamped into the metal, usually on the bottom bracket (where the pedals connect).
At least in the UK, there's a police register of stolen bikes using these numbers. It's also illegal to buy stolen property.
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 bad - the big issue is getting a GPS lock in urban areas, long GPS lock times from a cold-start, and battery life.
Definitely keen to see what else people are suggesting these days.
Renter's insurance usually covers stolen bicycles.
The thieves post in a public place basically admitting that they stole the item and are more than willing to meet up... Why did it take a third party to start doing it?
Laws are an excuse to be able to target kinds of activity the government wants to target at the time; it's more "laws enabling cops" than "cops enforcing laws".
That's why drug laws are so handy; all you have to do is say "I smelled marijuana" and you get to throw in jail whichever problem population you're targeting at the moment.
This way, the community are the ones initiating police action, rather than the police themselves (which, as you point out, bad incentives can then result in an unhealthy relationship between the community and police).
The problem is that it is probably rare that police is even willing to spend 30 minutes on traveling to a known location for a stolen bike. Seattle (maybe the US in general I don't know) seems like a good place in this regard if he isn't laughed at when trying to get a police officer to come talk to a bike thief.
From what I can tell, the police are good people, but the DA's are generally useless and are only interested in pushing an alternative social agenda as opposed to enforcing the laws passed by previous generations.
I mean, it sure fits the evidence. No one has an interest in "enforcing laws", they're tools to exert the power they wish to exert. In SF, I guess that's balancing property values that give you the cash to run further political campaigns with the social agenda shit that they think gets votes.
Police don't really have independent priorities beyond "paychecks & cool shit with minimal accountability" (in fairness, basically the same priorities as any other job, especially government jobs). They are mostly the penultimate shelf on which shit, rolling downhill, rests (the public gets to be the final one).
The police force can only really enforce the law because society gives them permission to do so. The instant that you have mobs of Bike Batmans the police will act because now you have increased vigilantism - and people taking the law into their own hands.
This sort of thing can escalate very quickly. If bike batman works well, then why not murderer batman, or rapist batman? And then there is the escalation of enforcement. What if bike batman decided to really get serious and use a gun to get the bike back?
The point is that the police should be handling this!
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 characterizing the issue as "simply do not care about bike thefts" may not be the most accurate description of the problem.
http://blog.priceonomics.com/post/30393216796/what-happens-t...
TLDR; with bikes theives can hit a sweet spot in the trade-off between risk and reward.
And last year in my town there was a "big bust" where they found a lot of bikes. Those who had registered their bikes could easily get them back.
Edit: Just found this supposedly national registry: https://www.nationalbikeregistry.com/
They say they are the "only true national database" (whatever that means), but I'm sure other (non-true) ones popped up because of this limitation.
BikeIndex.org, though - which is mentioned in the article because that's what the batman is referencing - is totally open and has over 220+ national partners and over 70k bikes on file.
This isn't true. I know several people that don't care much about buying things with a shady history but would never steal anything themselves. The logic was something like, "Would you still accept a $20 bill if it had been stolen at some point since it was printed?"
If they could prove you knew or suspected it might have been stolen, you can get charged (depending on your state's laws).
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.
Not here in Seattle, it isn't!
The photo here isn't that clear and he's wearing quite large sunglasses. If we put him in jeans, without the glasses and off a bike I'm pretty sure no one who's read the article could pick him out.
They're choosing the rational response when balancing a low-risk, high-reward activity such as bicycle theft.
The thief, instead of outrunning my friend and/or just dropping the phone, punched my friend. My friend plus a bystander who saw the punch ended up chasing the thief down. SF police don't give a fuck less about a stolen iphone, but that punch? The thief is doing 2-4 years.
But I would love to hear from you what we should do of the people who commit assault?
What is a woman was punched? or a minority (because they were a minority)?
Do you honestly believe that prison for assault does not deter would be assaulters?
In America? Mostly gang members and/or rape victims.
Crime needs to be punished and deterred. An argument can be made that communities where property crime is rampant are not using effective measures to deter criminals.
Imagine how many fewer bike thefts there would be if, for example, Seattle put in place caning as a punishment, like in Singapore. This could replace long term prison sentences while also being severe enough to scare would be criminals. What's your solution to decreasing rate of thefts, if not prison?
Other times they're strung out and looking for a fix. A bike takes 5 minutes to steal and they know where they can pawn it for crack.
You can't assume you're dealing with rational agents. When you're actively looking for bike thieves, you're going to run into an irrational one fairly often.
http://globalnews.ca/news/785241/bait-bike-leads-whistler-po...
Here is the HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4444708
One day the intersection of super easy access guns with the combined lack of intelligence/respect of a bike thief is going to make things end very badly for the good guys.
The fourth paragraph of the article starts with "He was however happy for the Guardian to publish a photograph of him".