Let's fight back the thieving scum

Motorcycling
1

I consider myselfy horrendusly luck not to ever have had my bike nicked. But seriously, I know it’s a matter of time, and possibly just one of these things I’ll have to live with. But reading on this forum litterally every week of yet another bike stolen really makes me sad.

We are bikers. For some reason we are fairly closed knit group. We look out for each other and I have yet to meet an unfriendly biker. Meet-ups and campaigns manage to gather thousands. We are pretty militant as a group.

But the question is, why the hell haven’t we used our community to fight bike theft. It looks like we are leaving it to the police/insurance and just go “oh well”. Screw this. How about we leverage on each other, via some association perhaps? Here is the kind of thing I am thinking. Please add/criticise/mock:

  • Raise money through members to pay for trackers fitted randomly amongst donating bikers. If there is a high proportion of trackers, thiefing becomes less profitable, higher likelihood to discover hideouts (and thus the scum, and perhaps other stolen bikes)

  • Campaigning to have bikers chain their bikes to each other. I always see on bike bays motorcycles chained to nothing next to each other WTF??? (I have to admit I am a bit shy too of chaining to another bike without permission).

  • Have listings for spare room in a other biker garages where you can leave your bike if you go on holiday and don’t need regular access to it (btw, I have space in a garage in Kings Cross)

  • Have a pressure group in contact with the police. Hasseling them about strategy and making sure they follow all leads in all thefts, and fill complaints/legal actions if they do not.

  • Work to have bike alarms to sound distinctive, and raising awareness of them amongst all bikers and encourage no to ignore (by challenging, calling police, whatever…)

  • Donate towards a fund witch rewards helping catch “dead or alive” bike thieves.

  • Use decoy bikes?

What do you think? any other ideas?

2

this is the uk dude, by the time we all argue between each other about this. nothing will be done:hehe:

my idea of dry bumming the scum with a broom stick dont seem to be a option in the eyes of the law:rolleyes:

3

there is already a group that does this, you join (i think it costs) and you stick a sticker somewhere on your bike, wtich tells other bikers your ok for them to loop the locks together.
Ill try and find the website that does this

4

the website is called Londonbikers and the sticker cost £1 from lou :wink:
we had a thread on this a while back and it was agreed that if you saw a LB sticker on a bike that it ment you can daisy chain to it

5

oddly enough, i didn’t think of that…

6

Good ideas.

I looked into getting a group together to combat theft when I joined LB about 4 years ago.

There were a few people interested, but most were worried about becoming targets.

My idea was to have a decoy bike donated by a member, fitted with a tracker and insured through donations from the community.

Then have the bike set up in one of London’s many bike theft hotspots, whilst it was under constant video surveillance by volunteers.

From this point, the initiative could stay legal or become illegal depending on what is decided would be the best course of action when thieves turn up.

Call the Police and have the thieves followed, or crack out the baseball bats, chains and knuckle dusters :smiley:

I would be willing to donate, if you got something off the ground.

Of course, if you were to start something, start it off the forum as LB wouldn’t want to be held responsible for the actions of its members.

7

You’d better add ‘stop buying stolen bikes or stolen bike parts’
Lets face it the only demand for stolen bikes is from bikers.

8

Definitely. It’s absolutely not on at all. Buying stolen good is just as serious of crime. I know someone might unwittingly buy stolen goods by accident but if you know of anyone selling stolen good immediately report them to crimestoppers.

0800 555 111

You’re not wasting anyone’s time, the police need intelligence. Always report any attempted thefts even if they get away or you don’t see much always report crime. Those criminals may have been seen somewhere else or it might give leads for future arrests.

I remember seeing on a BBC documentary about corrupt parking officials, it showed in the documentary that the parkies were eyeing up motorcycles and reporting them to their scummy mates in pick up trucks and then attempting to lift the bikes. They don’t do that stuff on a whim, there’s networks, there’s a market and people know about it. Absolute dirty rotten sh*ts!

9

I’m up for being involved in some vigalantism :smiley:

10

Mmmmh, I was expecting a more enthusiastic response to be honest. No wonders if every biker is left to fend for himself that we have so many thefts.

Stolen parts? sure. But apart from the frame and the engine how are you meant to know? I am betting that most stolen parts are just flogged on ebay to unsuspecting buyers. Are we all meant to buy new parts from dealers?

I don’t know, but I really have the feeling that it’s all just a matter of priority for the Police, and priority means who’s shouting more and what is the latest tabloid outcry. Think terrorist plots or homicides, and they are not too bad at solving cases with the tiniest of clues.

We have a gang of youths hanging a couple of roads from our flat. regular hanging spot, smoking pot, and at least once a week they steal a scooter, race it on street and pavement and even put fire to it a couple of times. Someone generally calls the Police, the come sirens blaring, the kids disperse and that’s the end of that. The scooters (and yes there were a couple of motorbikes at one point) are left on the street and get recovered. No clues, no arrests, no nothing. I even went to the police station in person and delivered two cds full of pictures and videos of the youths. Nothing. And that went on for at least a year.

Then at one point they got into some fight with some muslim students getting out of city uni. Don’t know how it started but the students ended up with two badly injured or which one cracked skull. The police managed to hunt three of the youths down and made the arrests within a day, with a couple of convictions to boot. No more youths, no more stolen scooters. (till last week that is as they are back, probably some got released on bail, dunno).

The moral of the story? Yes an assault like this is more serious than a stolen bike, but the police managed to investigate and prosecute on much less evidence. The reason being? The University muslim union kicked a monster fuss and thrown in the racial tensions card. something had to be done. Fine. But when they tell you there is not enough evidence for your bike theft, it’s plain ********, it’s just that there is other stuff to do higher up in the agenda, that’s it. Who cares about stolen bikes? Here is the form, go claim from your insurance.

The question is: who kicks a monster fuss for our stolen bikes?

11

I expect to get the Police to be involved it has to become a matter of concern for some politician somewhere. There would need to be a lobby group constantly pushing. You’d probably have to show a link between bike theft and terrorism (:sarcastic:) or funding other more dangerous criminal activity.

How many gangs are nicking bikes in london alone i wonder? How long would it take to … visit every one of them?

Are the bike press helping to raise awareness? Would it help if they were?

12

I’m surprised they don’t take it more seriously, stolen mopeds are often used in other crimes within London. Crime generally feeds off more crime, money accrued from crime is spent on drugs enticing more social depravation into the area.

I reported a gang of kids riding around on a stolent moped, I chased them off one night from our street. I called the police and they did nothing. The following night I was coming up the road and a guy was standing next to his car with a smashed window. He said that a a gang on a stolent put through his window and stole his bag in his car.

The next day the police stopped me on my motorbike and asked me did I know anything… :rolleyes: bit late.

I’d love to take a bat out and beat the living daylights out of these scummers but unfortunately the law takes an even dimmer view of that kind of behaviour and you’ll more likely to end up doing more porridge than these dirt-bags.

Constantly be vocal about it, write to everyone including your local MP. If you don’t make a noise you’ll never be heard. Always complain. Once something becomes higher profile the police have to do something about it. Quite frankly I reckon they don’t care a great deal.

13

I’m up for being involved aswell

14

On another thread I made the suggestion of some kind of community patrol round commuter bike bays in central London, rather like the community patrols of neighbours that reclaimed public areas from gangs in some areas (backed by the police). Or, if not, a commitment to keeping an eye on the bays near where we work and live and reporting any unusual activity.

About a month ago myself and a friend were sitting in my living room and saw 3 lads (about 12 - 14 years old) wheeling a Vespa down the street (it was a sunny Saiturday, people were out and about and noone did anything). We left the house and followed them onto the next street. I asked them whether that was their scooter and they didn’t reply, so I asked why they hadn’t got a helmet on. They then said it was their ‘dad’s’ scooter and they were taking it home. My friend then said she’d call the police and they dropped the scooter and ran off into the nearby estate. We reported it to the local station and stood guard over that scooter for 45 minutes until the police came (after a couple of phone reminders from me). Whilst we were guarding the scooter two lads came out of the estate, one of whom asked us why we had been ‘chasing his mates,’ I told him we were only chasing them as they had nicked a scooter. A bit later on a second lad cane out and hung around. When the police came they said it had been reported stolen and we left them to it. Tbh I wasn’t scared about confronting the boys as they only looked about 12 or so, but burly thugs in their thirties might be a different story.

However, I think we all can be responsible for keeoing an eye out, being aware, reporting suspicious activity and helping each other. It’s when people do nothing at all, or turn a blind eye, that theft escalates.

15

Patrol with one of these bad boys :smiley:

16

Don’t worry ASBO, I will take my Pitbull next time I see any bike thieves and dig out that old AK47 from the cellar;) :smiley: