Bike Theft Map
bike-theft-map.bikmo.com
bike-theft-map.bikmo.com
That's bullshit, want to make Danes feel safe? Actually do something about crime that affect normal people, like bike theft. Most people don't notice gangs and aren't affected by it, but I'd bet that most adult Dane have had a bike or two stolen.
Oh yes, refugees. Never had a single problem with them. A nice Syrian restaurant would actually be on my wishlist.
tbh what could they do about it ? They can't really go full NCIS over a stolen backpack. There are thousands of "minor" thefts, and other small crimes/offences, every day in big cities, they'd need thousands of people to review videos, look for potential witnesses, follow the trail, &c.
By prosecuting one person, you could prevent thousands of future stolen bags.
So the broken windows theory would say that seeing graffiti and panhandling would signal to other people that the area had a more general sense of lawlessness, that criminality was more normalized, and that if they commits crimes they would likely not be punished. However, the broken windows theory has been pretty soundly debunked and leads to tons of discriminatory targeting. [1][2]
[1] https://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/ny-oped-break-the-broken...
[2] https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/the-problem-with-...
It's a regular project management problem, there are N police officers and NxM crimes to solve (0<M<∞) at a different cost now prioritize their work.
Invest more in petty crime might have more gain in the future but might lead to more serious crimes in the short term (or not)
When parking outside when commuting and stuff, it's mostly homeless people nicking a wheel or a seatpost or bike lights. Still annoying and somewhat expensive, but I can understand that this type of crime is hard to do something about / investigate. But it could be "solved" by helping those in these situations better so they don't feel the need to do these petty-crimes (prevention rather than punishment).
Sometimes it's quicker to be a gang
Note the time in the top right. 2 minutes.
Danish police cracked down on them and returned my bike with the help of the VIN system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danish_bicycle_VIN-system
I mean second hand bicycles are a big market in the Netherlands, what kind of checks should you go through to make sure a private bicycle seller is legitimate.
I mean if you are buying a banged up 'stationfiets' just to commute is there really a way to know?
If you can reasonably know something is stolen you are liable under Dutch law. That applies to everything, not just bikes.
Buying a new ATB for 50 Euro would be such a thing where you can reasonably know it was stolen.
Actual lookup interface here: https://fdr.rdw.nl
Also, knowing that a bike should have an ID or a working tracer chip and seeing it missing is enough of a reason not to buy it, or knowing that if you buy it anyway you're on the hook for it.
Mostly I think bikes stolen in Denmark end up in Eastern Europe anyway.
Unless you mean the 'buying from a homeless person' part. Receiving stolen goods, would probably come down to if the jury or judge believed your claims that you had every reason to expect that the homeless guy really did own a $3K bike they wanted to sell.
If such products were legal and regulated, there would be legal avenues (the courts) for disputes to be settled, rather than violence.
It's the black market that causes the violence, not the products themselves. Something to consider.
Two gangs fighting over who's entitled to sell drugs on which street are, in some sense, minding their business.
A guy who is taking my bike from my home is invading deeply into my territory.
If you're goal is to make people feel safer, then you need to target the petty stuff that people actually experience. Also, much of the petty stuff is only petty because the police view it in isolation. Yeah, so what if my bike is stolen, insurance will deal with that. It's just that when they do catch a bike thief, then it often turns out that the same person stole 200 other bikes. Stealing a 3000DKK bike isn't worth the effort, but it's 50.000 bikes a year, that's an insane amount of money, given that almost no bike is ever returned.
I don't care if people on Christiania smokes or sell weed, and nor does most other people. Sure people should not experience gun violence, even in ghetto areas, but you can't direct all policing towards a few specific types of crime. It won't make people feel any safer.
Idk, if I had anti-tank missiles used in my region (like with the Nordic Biker Wars in the 90ies) or hand grenades like in Sweden more recently, I'd feel a lot less safe than if that doesn't happen but bikes are stolen more frequently. People tend to care more about getting shot, stabbed or blown up than about their transportation being stolen. Policies reflect that, imho with good reason.
It's like saying you don't need a vaccine because you never get sick. Yeah there's a reason for that.
So yes, the police should focus more on human and drug traffic than bike theft.
Someone threatens you with force: That will affect you. Even if nothing happened physically. You wish you can get rid of that experience for 50.000 DKK for the rest of your life.
Most likely, yes, they will find the people who attacked you, but you where still attacked.
Simply buy a fleet of bikes, fit trackers and motion alarms to each, somewhere hard to detect like inside the tyres, then park them around the city secured by shitty locks in areas covered by CCTV, and then as soon as any bike moves more than a few feet, go arrest the person moving it.
Considering in a city of 10 Million people, there are probably only 100 who actively walk around with bolt cutters, it should be a simple case of finding every thief.
Once you've found the thieves, the harder task is making them stop stealing bikes. Encourage courts to hand out "get drug free or go to prison" sentences. Offer new identities in new cities to people who have picked friends they regret...
Also don't forget that thieves are not stupid, trackers can be easily disabled and cameras avoided
Not hard at all if you make bike theft an automatic death sentence...
But everything else with an equally low bar to entry is much crappier. Stealing bikes and cats you get to be your own boss. Doing manual labor you have to show up on time, not do drugs on the job. Working for the gig economy crap you have to please some of the worst of the general public and a black box algorithm. Sure you can try run scrap, do odd jobs or part out cars but if you do either of those enough to make "stealing stuff" levels of money the government will be up your ass the same way they would be if you were stealing cats and bikes.
These people aren't desperate. They're assessing their options for making a buck and it's no surprise that the "I don't car what other people think" subset chooses petty crime. They need better options for making a buck. Not stuff that alleviates the need to make a buck. Most people willing to incur the risks involved stealing stuff have enough initiative and work ethic they're not gonna sit at home and smoke pot all day if the government gives them a handout.
Something like Lojack but for bikes would be another way to go, if a city would commit to pursuing thefts of bikes with GPS trackers (with the additional incentive that it would likely lead to more recoveries).
Do that - and you'll be accused in "using the police to disproportionally punish the poor instead of working on the crimes that actually matter and helping the communities to get out of the vicious poverty cycle"
Sarcasm aside, this has some rationale: say you caught a bike thief. What you gonna do next? Fine him? He likely has no money. Put him into prison? Will cause more problems down the road.
Whipping his ass in Trafalgar Square would be a good option, but is highly unlikely to ever happen...
I'm afraid I don't feel bad buying a bike from a dodgy guy in a street corner to replace my bike that was taken by a dodgy guy from a street corner...
i sometimes dream about eastern european villages where everyone rides superlight fullies and aero racers.
And if you are buying a 1000€ bike for 50€ you can be pretty sure it is stolen and buying stolen goods is illegal and can get you in trouble (if the police would actually be doing anything about bike theft...)
I've seen it countless times in Italy, people don't even bother buying an expensive bike, they just buy some half broken bike (usually from the same dodgy guys in the streets who steal them) because they know they will get stolen. The police doesn't even bother fighting it, they often talk to many of the immigrants and rarely do something. I know because, as a second generation immigrant from Africa, the police was always stopping me just to talk.
It's kind of like bike sharing, you pay 20 euros until the next time they steal it from you.
On the plus side, it's giving a livelihood to poor and desperate immigrants who can't find a job in the sad Italian economy.
If it wasn't for bike theft and drug dealing, things would probably escalate to worse crimes.
Look at this crazy story to see how international it can get: https://cyclingindustry.news/vanmoofs-pledge-to-recover-stol...
Word will spread out really quickly that some bikes are bugged and there's no way to spot them (unlike the fleet of identical bikes purchased by the police department).
Doesn't mean someone is not losing anything but if your authorities are like ours there is just so much of it going on they cannot afford to prosecute it all for cost and more importantly, because crime statistics would show higher numbers than palatable.
Example, in California increased the dollar amount on petty thefts and damages to nearly a thousand dollars. This includes shoplifting, breaking a window to steal a small value item, and more. This effectively excuses the police from bothering because they know most courts for these crimes operate on catch and release.
Now, if your bike costs more then insure it. Sadly this is what a lot of society has become, we accept a certain level of loss because just as you can find many people who want these thieves jailed there are numbers who will claim its not their fault but societies fault for not providing.
I personally believe the police have totally forgotten their mandate. They’ve become so focused on the big fish, they’ve lost all appetite for anything that doesn’t have the potential to lead to a big press conference.
I want every single little crime investigated like NCIS, not because I think it will lead to less crime (I know the jury goes back and forth on this one), but because I think people don’t feel safe in their neighborhoods anymore, they constantly feel like their neighbors are gonna steal from them and there’s nothing anyone can do about it. If instead cops started taking all this stuff seriously, and the courts had a better way to handle it, people would be happier and feel less antagonistic against those they perceive as other (white, black, etc)
Until police stop focusing on them and they start gradually making themselves noticeable, and eventually you wish your city had a bike theft problem instead of a gang problem. Source: lived in several very un-Danish gang-run settings around the world.
There's a dollar value threshold that the police use when deciding whether to investigate a theft. A simple measure would be to eliminate that threshold for bikes.
Stealing a bike (or a scooter or other means of transportation) is just a very damaging crime. I think police should be pro-active catching thieves (that if setting prop bikes to steal and catching the takers). Instilling some fear in the thieves' would be a huge progress.
If the US actually wants to reduce carbon emissions, prosecuting bike theft (and making cycling safer in general) is low hanging fruit. To the extent that carbon reduction requires behavioral change, cycling is (anecdotally) a behavioral change people actually really want to make, but US cities make it harder and more expensive than it needs to be.
That's disgustingly cynical. With the possible exception of some cargo bikes, I would guess the cost of a bike correlates strongly with how easily its owner can cope with its loss.
I see no reason why bikes should be exempt.
I have family who live in an area which over the last few decades has become majority immigrant (as in most people from the area weren't born in Britain) and overwhelmingly non-British (75%+, if I remember correctly). Crime has become extremely bad and my elderly family feel culturally isolated as one of the few non-muslim, British residents left on their council block.
I honestly don't understand what people mean about immigration not affecting normal people. I can only assume they're just talking about the middle-class educated working immigrants who speak English -- you know, the kind of immigrant the average middle class person associates with. Presumably they don't live in a flat where most people no longer celebrate Christmas, don't speak your language, and don't work. I have female family members from that area who have been groomed, my own GF was sexually abused and accused of being a "white-who*e" several times.
If immigration isn't affecting you personally, that's great. Now I'm in a middle-class area it's not something I worry about much anymore either, but I urge people to try living in these majority areas for a bit if they believe mass-non-western-immigration into Europe is no problem.
I find this the most alarming part of what Europe is doing. In the USA they had a welfare system back in the 1960s that many saw as actively discouraged employment and dual parent households. These policies were meant to help American Blacks recover from centuries of discrimination. But the unfortunate part is that it just ended up creating permanent ghetto subcultures of culturally ingrained poverty, crime, and government dependency.
Are you sure it was the welfare state that created it, and not continued discrimination, redlining, and systemic racism?
I don't believe all the people and organizations carrying out those practices just shriveled up and died as soon as the CRA was passed. You're looking at wet streets, and deducing that they obviously caused rain.
Racism is a problem that has existed and probably always will, but I don't think it is appropriate to blame racism for of all of modern day ills.
The US had a welfare system since the 30s, and it primarily benefited whites. Blacks were systematically discriminated against, denied benefits, and kicked off benefits where whites were not.
> “From the early history of the country’s welfare programs, allowing local discretion as to who can receive benefits has continually led to African American families receiving less or getting tossed off the rolls altogether. When mothers’ pensions, the precursor to welfare, were launched in the early 20th century, they mostly went to white women. Case workers had a fair amount of discretion in who received these pensions, and they believed African American women should work—something they tended to believe was beneath white women. They regularly denied African American women pensions” [1]
> “The ADC was an extension of the state-operated mothers’ pension programs, where white widows were the primary beneficiaries. The criteria for eligibility and need were state-determined, so blacks continued to be barred from full participation because the country operated under the “separate but equal” doctrine adopted by the Supreme Court in 1896.” [2]
When more blacks were able to enroll in programs, due to LBJ’s war on poverty and the civil rights movement, attitudes on welfare began to change. Then Reagan played on those racial attitudes and shaped the modern conception of the lazy black welfare queen ghetto culture.
> “The term “welfare” had a positive connotation among Americans before the 1960s, according to Soss, but as the program became more diverse, stereotypes about “freeloaders” started to emerge.” [1]
>” During [the Reagan administration], data from public polls indicate that a growing percentage of Americans believed that slackness and lack of motivation to work were the main causes of poverty” [3]
> “This anti-welfare-ideology manifested itself in an altered perception of welfare recipients and a changed view on poverty. The poor were no longer regarded as victims of the economic system… Blaming the poor for their life situation is nothing new, but within the Reagan years stigmatization intensified drastically. Besides emphasizing dependency over poverty, the government allowed the term welfare to be further labeled by race and gender. Although welfare has always been associated with these terms, the administration’s welfare-state-rhetoric involved severe generalizations and moralistic accusations. Additionally, the promotion of negative stereotypes incorporated the distinction between those in need of protection, the undeserving poor, and the deserving poor, including “welfare queens” and “freeloaders”. The “truly needy” considered as deserving assistance, are, inter alia, the elderly or disabled, so to speak groups who should not be expected to work.” [3]
> These policies were meant to help American Blacks recover from centuries of discrimination. But the unfortunate part is that it just ended up creating permanent ghetto subcultures of culturally ingrained poverty, crime, and government dependency.
There is little to no data indicating welfare is responsible for black poverty. There is lots of data that hundreds of years of slavery, followed by a hundred years of Jim Crow, followed by redlining [4], followed by using highway construction, urban planning, and eminent domain to destroy black communities [5], followed by the war on drugs created expressly so Nixon could target black people [6], and hundreds of other policies and actions targeting black people and black communities are responsible for black poverty.
> “We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did" [6]
[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/06/race-sa...
[2] https://apnews.com/article/fbd5d3c83e3243e9b03e46d7cb842eaa
[3] https://www.grin.com/document/519964
[4] https://www.npr.org/2017/05/03/526655831/a-forgotten-history...
[5] https://www.itdp.org/2021/03/10/highways-and-zoning-tools-of...
[6] https://www.businessinsider.com/nixon-adviser-ehrlichman-ant...
Namely that black poverty was already decreasing before the 1960s and that the progress was slowed down by the welfare policies. Those years also brought the destruction of family (increase of single parent household supported by welfare) which pushed a generation of unstable kids into poverty.
All poverty was decreasing before the 60s. Black poverty was just decreasing much more slowly than whites. So let’s talk about the times leading up to the 60s.
In 1947, half (49%) of all college students were military veterans, going to school on their GI Bills ($137 billion government money spent in today’s dollars). However since blacks were straight up banned from southern universities, and effectively banned from northern ones, of the few black veterans able to collect at all, 95% ended up in unaccredited or underfunded black universities, while whites filled the ivy league. Since being an alumni gives your children and grandchildren preference, whites are still directly benefiting while blacks were shut out.
By 1955, nearly a third of all post war home loans had been GI bill loans ($316 billion in todays dollars). However, since blacks were banned from buying homes in white neighborhoods (otherwise known as any desirable neighborhood) and banks would just deny black loans in black neighborhoods, they were unable to buy homes, and the few homes they were able to buy were in the least desirable areas. In places where black veterans made up almost 40% of the veteran population, 99% of approved GI home loans still went to whites. The overall homeownership gap between whites and blacks doubled from pre to post-WWII.
Since home values skyrocketed in value over the next several decades, homeownership and education are the cornerstones of wealth generation and intergenerational wealth, and a college leads to much higher lifetime earnings, is it any surprise that white wealth boomed along with the post-WWII economy and black wealth didn’t? Is it any wonder that the children of the now financially secure post-WWII white families also did well and benefited from their preferential legacy college admissions and financial freedom and security of their family? The US government handed out $450 billion in today’s money, over 95% going to whites, allowing them to own homes and get valuable educations during the biggest economic boom in the country’s history.
So no, black poverty wasn’t slowed by welfare, it was just that white poverty was massively cut (and white intergenerational wealth increased) with home ownership and education, while being denied to blacks. While welfare is, and was, not perfect, it is not the primary driver or cause of black inequality in the US.
> Thomas Sowell's books (and listened to some conversations on YouTube), I remember reading statistics proving the opposite.
Tomas Sowell is a perfect example of the phrase “data without context is meaningless”, where he basically blames violent “ghetto culture” caused by liberal welfare and public housing, while ignoring actual economic activities going on. Things like the massive amount of urban decline (or urban decay) that has happened across the US in the last 50 years. Something that has economically disadvantaged and trapped people of all races, but blacks most of all due to the redlining and white flight to the newly built suburbs in the 50s and 60s (that blacks weren’t allowed to buy). The massive drug war that directly targeted black individuals and neighborhoods, both by accident and by design, and the subsequent explosion of imprisoned blacks. Funny how drug use rates between whites and blacks are basically the same, but blacks are 4-6 times more likely to be arrested, convicted, and have longer prison times for drug crimes. Even what I have talked about is only one part of the picture, but Sowell bends over backwards blame everything on welfare making blacks violent and lazy.
Hence the reservations I guess. Very "privileged"...
I agree with the rest of your post though. Actually right now in France, since immigration is starting to hurt some of the classes that traditionally promoted it (teachers with the beheading affair, politicians losing against ethnic lists in some cities, journalists being aggressed, one in coma) the public discourse is slowly changing... a little. When everyone, up to the president and people in the parliament will be negatively affected, things will change fast. Until then people having legit complains will be labeled racists.
It isn’t more accepted, it is a different situation where these natives were systematically wiped out and almost completely destroyed entirely. They are given special protections now (not privileges) because they are still feeling the very real effects of active cultural destruction, forced sterilizations, children kidnapped and put into “reeducation camps”, etc. The British government is not banning speaking English or forcing children to attend Islamic schools or banning white Britons from owning property.
> I have family who live in an area which over the last few decades has become majority immigrant
It sounds like what you mean is the neighborhood has become majority poor. The low-income immigrants moving in were likely an effect of, not a cause of, the neighborhood’s economic decline. Lack of economic opportunity is strongly correlated with crime, immigration status is not.
> Now I'm in a middle-class area it's not something I worry about much anymore
As I suspected. You should probably look into what city planning policies, or lack thereof, and other economic factors are allowing this kind of neighborhood disinvestment, and not blame the low income people who may or may not be immigrants that move to the housing that they can afford.
I also grew up in Britain and I grew up on a road where there were only 2 or 3 white families and there was a Mosque. I went to a primary school were the majority of kids were non-white. Your description of immigration does not match my experience.
Presumably they don't live in a flat where most people no longer celebrate Christmas, don't speak your language, and don't work.
This is an inaccurate racist stereotype. My muslim neighbours bought me a Christmas present, spoke English and worked.
Since that has not happened, such a comparison comes off as both incredibly tone-deaf, and incredibly ignorant of history.
PS. It's not Native Americans[1] that are driving anti-immigration sentiment in the United States.
[1] Yes, obviously, some of them harbour such sentiment. They don't make up the majority of the political support for it, though. Most of that support comes from European immigrants and descendants of European immigrants, many of whom were admitted into the country with not much more than the clothes on their backs.
I've had two thefts in twice as many years recently. A handful of friends have also had their bikes stolen in the last two years. It's very demoralizing.
When you can't turn property into quick cash, the incentive to steal goes down. A lot.
16 months combined with some sort of monitoring afterwards (and, in an ideal world, support in jail and afterwards to find it easy to move into legal work) should be enough to make the crime not worth doing and to hopefully stop that person doing it again.
Would doubling that prison time help anything?
No, but something like a log scale would've been good.
We've been stuck in the system for more than a year now, $17k saved for the pound of flesh they demand.
The current PM, Mette Frederiksen, has lead the charge in morphing her party into a milder form of the People's Party. I never expected to see my country turn into this hyper-nationalist racist bastion but here we are.
Meanwhile I've had two of my bikes stolen in the last year so from this subjective point of view everything is worse.
In 1990's America, this was called "community policing." The idea was that if you cracked down on small, quality-of-life crimes, the bigger crimes would also come down. The logic was that people who commit big crimes don't think twice about also committing small crimes.
This led to New York's famous "piss and beer" patrols, which targeted small crimes like people drinking beer and urinating in public. Which eventually led to allegations of racial profiling, and the patrols being eliminated.
Racial profiling is bad. But in the cities where I've seen the quality-of-life crimes addressed, it's actually worked. But I don't think any city does it anymore because the practice has been labeled and tainted.
It works in that it used the almighty jackboot to root out violations of minor local ordinances in exactly the kinds of neighborhoods where nobody wanted those ordinances in the first place. And that makes it a crappy place to live. And of course the criminals move elsewhere, because career criminals tend to not have very long term living arrangements and can easily relocate to neighborhoods where you're not gonna get harassed for walking your dog with beer in hand. The problem just shuffles around. Also enforcing laws that criminalize what a community considers normal behavior is exactly how you destroy community trust.
Community policing reduced crime, because people begrudgingly violated minor laws less publicly, but it didn't increase standards of living.
They get paid with tax money and it doesn't matter whether they arrest 50 thieves or 0. Paradoxically if they do their job less, politicians can do political campaign and find excuses to raise taxes and allocate more money to the police.
Besides, the centralised nature of the police make it so that some crimes are given more priority than others, which is probably what you were alluding to. Why is my country spending 1mln man hours per year persecuting small cannabis dealers and doesn't do anything about people doing real estate scams? (real story which happened to me and the Metropolitan police just closed the case, after having evidence, the location of the guy, the evidence on Companies House he was creating companies with fake names to reset his reputation and after having arrested and released the guy).
If me and my neighbourhood had our own private insurance, private police and our own private laws we could agree not to persecute victimless crimes, to have a number of patrolling agents, to have a certain level of security monitoring.
All of these services would have a cost and we could decide whether to pay it or not. If the police would do a bad job we could hire another police agency. Or we could not pay anyone and have our own internal armed force keeping law and order (think of a rural poor village having different needs compared to a city).
Is the idea that those are places where bikes are stolen? If so, isn't this just going to highlight towns and cities because that's lots of bikes are (particularly somewhere like Cambridge where there are loads of bikes), and wouldn't it be better to do per-capita bike thefts? Otherwise this is just a map of where bikes are, rather than where it's more or less dangerous to leave your bike unattended.
Edit: Actually, thefts per bike per capita. Just per capita doesn't take out the fact that there are some places with loads more bikes, like Cambridge. That's presuming the idea is to show where it's most likely that your bike will get stolen.
edit: Looks like it loads the outer level heat map data first, then the next level, etc. However, zooming in at this point breaks the site and turns it white. (This is on FF(87)). National Average widget also fails to load on FF, but works on Chrome, same goes for the zoom-in-page-turns-white-bug.
I went to security and asked to see the tape. They told me a) they can't show me any footage; b) they don't film the bike racks.
I filed the available police and corp report forms and kissed my hopes goodbye.
By actively not caring about bike thefts, authorities are actually encouraging them.
Now I ride my electric skateboard, which I can keep at my desk, safe.
Bike storage needs to improve.
Or just rent more space and add a few racks indoor. I've seen a few tech companies that are doing it. Close to the showers.
I can click a borough, it alone becomes green-ish. I click another, that becomes purple. I have no indication what these colors are supposed to be or if something is supposed to happen?
There are many solutions to bike theft, but the only reasonable conclusion is that it is in fact not a problem. There is no amout of data, stories, or pressure that will make it a priority because it is specifically something that is managed. Police can increase and decrease enforcement of it at their absolute discretion, while tolerating it in neighbourhoods where they wish to.
I was a serious urban cyclist 25 years ago, and participated in Critical Mass rides and alleycat races and the activist culture that ultimately yielded the bikelanes we have today, but I've switched to a car and motorcycle because they're just better, and I don't want to participate in what that culture has become. I have little sympathy for bike thieves or people who loot cars and the stories about desperation from people who anecdotally go ballistic at other kinds of victim blaming, so long as it's not the victims of an actual crime.
As someone who lives in a city that has snow 6 months a year, and has a huge rate of bike theft and car breakins, do you know what you can leave on your porch year round that will never get stolen? Shovels and brooms. When snow shovels and brooms aren't safe, I'll engage in the conversation about poverty, but until then, bike theft is just predatory opportunism.
When I worked in a bike shop, a co-worker told me there's multiple bike rings who steal and run bikes between Minneapolis and Chicago. From there, they go all over the country - mostly to the east coast. He said they're able to steal a few hundred bikes a month, and since the cops turn a blind eye, its easy money.
I think you nailed it here. I never thought about it with this clarity.
Bookstores were untouched while electronics and clothing stores were hit hard during the 2011 London riots https://slate.com/culture/2011/08/london-riots-why-looters-d...
I hadn't realised Calgacus was talking about bicycle theft!
Edit: Just to confirm, up here north of the walls (note the plural) we do actually have bicycles.
Zoomed in on London: https://i.imgur.com/0LLG9Bz.png
Seems it would be more useful to show [monthly bike thefts per square km] divided by [population per sq km]. Or perhaps better yet the denominator would be [bikes per sq km].
I'd want to know if there is relative safety in numbers, i.e., lower likelihood that my particular bike will be stolen in the highly bike-dense areas, or the opposite because the thieves over-focus their efforts in the bike-dense areas.
Any insights?
There is some safety in average price of bikes, if your ride is noticeably below average and still secured like the more expensive ones it will be virtually immune to theft. So in a place with more expensive bikes the threshold were theft risk begins can be much higher than in places where everybody goes cheap (because of all the thievery)
I never lived in a place like that, but I suspect that in places like Amsterdam or Copenhagen the cycle of theft is bordering on turning into something that is effectively more like a service charge, as in occasionally your bike disappears for random unscheduled refurbishing/resale and you just go to the next "refurbishment center"/fence and pay them for a freshly serviced bike, hardly more than you'd pay for service the regular way, if you brought in own bike (and you'd have no bike in the meantime).
It almost sounds a bit romantic, but the huge downside is that you can't really use a higher value bike in that scenario and that severely reduces the general utility of cycling: the cheap clunkers that fit well into the "random unscheduled refurbishing" pattern might be fine on short distances, but they tend to be unbearably bad for longer rides (similar to bikeshare bikes, just not quite that bad)
But it's a real problem. What's the solution, a medium-distance-rideable bike that actually folds up into a suitcase like the Jetson's flying car? The folding bikes today all seem inadequate, so it'd need to be made of magic unobtanium, but would that even solve the problem?
It knows where your bike is at all times. It would be cool if one could use the ratio of where people park compared to how often something is stolen from there or something. Like, is it really an unsafe spot or just a popular one? Or is it really a safe spot, or a really unsafe one therefore almost no one uses it any more.