It's an enormous shame that people are driven to cars by crime.
Isn't it possible to increase the pain of stealing a bike to similar levels as stealing a car?
Maybe GPS or mandatory registration? Both?
Isn't it possible to increase the pain of stealing a bike to similar levels as stealing a car?
Maybe GPS or mandatory registration? Both?
As for theft, there is little to no enforcement so it’s easy money for thieves.
However, there are things you can do to ensure the bicycle next to yours is stolen rather than yours. Look up the Sheldon brown locking technique which secured the frame and back wheel (the most expensive of the two) with a single ulock. There are also anti theft bolts that cost 20–30$/€/£ and will secure your saddle and quick release wheels. I use a kryptonite lock and thread the cable through the paniers handles so it’s annoying to steal as well. The battery has a key lock and I have an airtag in the bicycle. I remove the lights when parking and try to park in well lit busy areas or in underground parkings.
I was riding a regular bicycle in Canada for years, never got it stolen. Only once I made the mistake to park at Yonge and Dundas in Toronto late at night and some lowlife scum stole my airzound horn because it’s the only thing I hadn’t bolted down and it was the only bike on the rack… it’s worth 20$ but they took the time to unscrew it and steal it. But otherwise, nothing stolen because any other bicycle around was less hassle to steal parts or whole than mine and thus not worth the risk/time.
Wheels are bend, break cables cut, tires cutted away, chaain broken, and so forth.
Thief steals something valuable. Then wait for the replacement. Steals replacement too.
This has happened to a few of my friends (who have expensive hobbies). Very demoralizing.
(mandatory registration "solves" the problem by pushing people back to cars, like mandatory helmets)
We're in a world where an increasing number of crimes have essentially been decriminalised due to lack of police resources or due to politics, from minor drug offences to prolific shoplifting in certain parts of the world. Unfortunately, bike theft also seems to be one of those crimes that goes unpunished.
Bike theft will never be a priority, as bikes are low-value thefts (compared to cars, or house burglaries), and bike theives are unlikely to hurt anyone, whereas car thieves might be very dangerous, if it's joyriding kids.
SF police just don't care at all about property crime. If you have to report a property crime for insurance purposes, they'll blame you. IMO, this directly fuels more and higher levels of crime.
If you call them out specifically on bicycle theft, they'll just shrug and say that most bike owners don't record the frame serial number. If this is the case, state law should require that the serial number be submitted to a database upon purchase, but there are obviously incentives for bike shops to push back on this idea.
That said, if you want to get a GPS tracker, the options have exploded in the last few years. They're now available concealed within normal looking taillights, or in a tubular form that can be dropped down the seat tube or inserted inside the handlebar.
They don't care about our property.
eg Rape kits go unprocessed.
eg Won't do a query geofence cell phone activity to catch a theft ring.
eg Preying on elderly is completely ignored, though would be trivial to investigate. (Money leaves a trail.)
Whereas it's no hold's barred for public protests (face id, sting ray for cells). Any heterodox group is infiltrated and subverted (agitprop, agent provocateurs).
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There's got to be a better way.
I keep thinking of Robert Peel's 9 Policing Principles:
To prevent crime and disorder, as an alternative to their repression by military force and severity of legal punishment.
To recognize always that the power of the police to fulfill their functions and duties is dependent on public approval of their existence, actions and behavior, and on their ability to secure and maintain public respect.
To recognize always that to secure and maintain the respect and approval of the public means also the securing of the willing cooperation of the public in the task of securing observance of laws.
To recognize always that the extent to which the cooperation of the public can be secured diminishes proportionately the necessity of the use of physical force and compulsion for achieving police objectives.
To seek and preserve public favor, not by pandering to public opinion, but by constantly demonstrating absolute impartial service to law, in complete independence of policy, and without regard to the justice or injustice of the substance of individual laws, by ready offering of individual service and friendship to all members of the public without regard to their wealth or social standing, by ready exercise of courtesy and friendly good humor, and by ready offering of individual sacrifice in protecting and preserving life.
To use physical force only when the exercise of persuasion, advice and warning is found to be insufficient to obtain public cooperation to an extent necessary to secure observance of law or to restore order, and to use only the minimum degree of physical force which is necessary on any particular occasion for achieving a police objective. To maintain at all times a relationship with the public that gives reality to the historic tradition that the police are the public and that the public are the police, the police being only members of the public who are paid to give full-time attention to duties which are incumbent on every citizen in the interests of community welfare and existence.
To recognize always the need for strict adherence to police-executive functions, and to refrain from even seeming to usurp the powers of the judiciary of avenging individuals or the State, and of authoritatively judging guilt and punishing the guilty. To recognize always that the test of police efficiency is the absence of crime and disorder, and not the visible evidence of police action in dealing with them.
Heck, there was a story recently where a guy found where is stolen car was and the police refused to get it back for him. So he ended up resorting to vigilante justice with deadly consequences.
I think there are stories where police did nothing to protect a person being maimed or killed right next to them - and they suffer no consequences
But people would complain about the ugliness of big metal boxes appearing everywhere.
Seems to be fine?
Thieves don't care much for the enforcement, it's property crime, so it's deprioritized. Burglary is the exceptions in terms of property crimes, because people _really_ care about being safe in their homes and will vote appropriately.