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Comment by dankohn1 | Hacker News Reader

Can anyone explain why police don't do a huge crackdown on bike theft in Amsterdam? I heard repeatedly when I was there about how bad the theft is. Is there something stopping cops from putting out a dozen fancy bikes without locks every day and arresting everyone who grabs one and rides off? Is the legality of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entrapment different in the Netherlands?

Because it seems like a relatively small policing effort could enable a massive improvement in quality of life.

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Police doesn't do much, because it is low on their priority list (despite the terrible numbers in the NL).

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They do decoy bikes, e.g. here's a news article about a thief being caught by police stealing a decoy bike for the second time in 6 months published just 3 days ago (in Dutch, but it Google Translates):

http://www.nhnieuws.nl/nieuws/207931/Fietsendief-in-Amsterda...

The problem is that the police have other stuff to do, and they might as well be pissing in the wind with the amount of bike theft here. They could do a huge crackdown, but that's unsustainable and after the crackdown we'll be right back to the same theft rate.

Interestingly there was a case this year (currently going through appeals) where a judge ruled that a man stealing a bicycle in a residential neighborhood should be found not guilty because the police had created the circumstances of the bike's theft:

http://www.dutchnews.nl/news/archives/2016/01/decoy-bikes-sh...

It's unclear what that means for bicycle entrapment in general, but an article in Parool (again, in Dutch) suggested that this may have implications for the methods of the Amsterdam police depending on how it goes:

http://www.parool.nl/parool/nl/4/AMSTERDAM/article/detail/42...

>They could do a huge crackdown, but that's unsustainable and after the crackdown we'll be right back to the same theft rate.

Actually, there's evidence that a sustained crackdown can succeed in changing norms. I believe that the biking rate in Copenhagen is almost as high as Amsterdam but the theft rate is far lower. Norms matter. Here's an example:

http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2012/10/15/buenos_aires_...

> "The problem is that the police have other stuff to do, and they might as well be pissing in the wind with the amount of bike theft here. They could do a huge crackdown, but that's unsustainable and after the crackdown we'll be right back to the same theft rate."

How about using CCTV at bicycle locking points? Combined with satellite imagery it should be a relatively non-resource intensive way to catch the thiefs. Of course, there's still the question of whether a surveillance-based solution is worse than the crime it's meant to address.

Let's not turn Dutch cities into another example of the horrifying panopticon that UK cities have become.

Dude, they already are. Cameras everywhere

CCTV is heavily restricted in The Netherlands, and you need to post a prominent sign in any public place that's under CCTV surveillance, this would obviously make it ineffective to catch thieves.

>How about using CCTV at bicycle locking points?

Now you have two problems -- and a freezing cold wind coming in from the wide open Overton window.

I left the Netherlands 15 years ago, but if I recall correctly, entrapment is mostly illegal, and cops usually don't care very much about bike theft, which is very low on their priority list. From what I understand, rampant bike theft is less of a problem outside of Amsterdam (and maybe a few other "big" cities).

(I never had my bike stolen, living in an urban area in the south of the Netherlands. That doesn't mean that it didn't happen there... if you leave your bike standing in odd places, it may well be gone when you come back. One way employed by thieves was to drive around with a van and just pick up any bikes that were standing around, locked or not, in broad daylight or not.)

What would you do with the bike thieves you catch? Fines mean nothing to the career petty criminals, and jailing people for petty theft leads to hopeless US style mass incarceration.

There is plenty of middle ground, from community service to light jail time, maybe even rehab for some of them.

Yes, I think community service (like picking up trash) is quite feasible.

I think there is a lot of bike theft, but people also keep this alive by buying a 3 AM Special from a junky in the center of town.

I've lived in Amsterdam for the last 9 years and the only bike I've had stolen was one that I didn't lock.... I even still have a bike sitting in a rack outside my house that has been mine for 18 years.

I'm riding a fancy looking €1000 bike daily, have been for the last four years, I lock it with just the default ring through the back wheel when I go into a shop or something, and use the chain I have to lock it to a bike rack. It's even insured if I just use the simple lock.

Thanks to some nice tax breaks (meaning you can get a bike for up to 49% off though your employer (look for 'fietsplan')) I am actually on the hunt for a new bike. :-)

They do crack down on bike theft, but you can never get rid of all theft, and the police has plenty of other priorities.

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