Where are all the stolen bikes going?

shutup

I have a friend who is a Garda. Lovely guy but I’ve always been suspicious of where he got his bikes. He has a good road bike and good mountain bike and when he was showing me he seemed nervous. Was completely over stressing how he used the bike to work for the road bike and got a good deal from a friend on the mountain bike. He must have said it twenty times.
I wouldn’t have given it a second thought if he hadn’t protested so much.
Now having seen the state of the bikes at the Garda auction I am convinced the Gaurds are keeping the good recovered bikes for themselves or at least getting first chance to buy them on the cheap.

Tombo2001

shutup wrote: »

I have a friend who is a Garda. Lovely guy but I’ve always been suspicious of where he got his bikes. He has a good road bike and good mountain bike and when he was showing me he seemed nervous. Was completely over stressing how he used the bike to work for the road bike and got a good deal from a friend on the mountain bike. He must have said it twenty times.
I wouldn’t have given it a second thought if he hadn’t protested so much.
Now having seen the state of the bikes at the Garda auction I am convinced the Gaurds are keeping the good recovered bikes for themselves or at least getting first chance to buy them on the cheap.

The gardai at local level I find very good, but obviously that can be hit an miss.

However- the garda bike auctions …...its always a bit vague, I never see any notifications of these.

shutup

Tombo2001 wrote: »

However- the garda bike auctions …...its always a bit vague, I never see any notifications of these.

I just saw one about five years ago. Was so bad you wouldn’t have wanted anything on offer. Broken up bikes missing parts.
With thousands of bikes stolen and not reunited with rightful owners how could they not have anything decent for sale? Very suspicious!!

Tombo2001

shutup wrote: »

I just saw one about five years ago. Was so bad you wouldn’t have wanted anything on offer. Broken up bikes missing parts.
With thousands of bikes stolen and not reunited with rightful owners how could they not have anything decent for sale? Very suspicious!!

This would suggest same.

https://www.boards.ie/vbulletin//showthread.php?t=2057941901

The Davestator

Would a log book similar to a car not work?
I.e - Its illegal to sell or advertise a bike without a logbook number being entered?

NasserShammaz

https://lost.ie/bags-and-wallets/bags-other/bike-repair-kit-bag-tubes-tools-repair-kit-black

Beasty

The Davestator wrote: »

Would a log book similar to a car not work?
I.e - Its illegal to sell or advertise a bike without a logbook number being entered?

I don't think that's practicable. How many bikes are there out there? How many have been thrown out when past their sell-by date? Who is going to manage all of this? Who is going to remember where they put their paperwork

In theory it's all already there with frame numbers, but how many actually make a note of that, and how many of those can remember where they put it?

At the top end I suspect owners are typically very careful, and maybe do record that sort of stuff. However if someone managed to nick a dozen €5k+ racing bikes it's not inconceivable they could find their way onto 2nd hand markets in other countries

It works with cars as there are serious penalties for not having the records, and the likes of engine numbers are stored by relevant government authorities. Think of the GDPR requirements though when you are often talking under 18yos who "keep" the bikes

Again there's the likes of bikeregister.com which is out there for people to record details, but who ever bothers checking there when they are buying a bike?

Ultimately I think we are all too lazy/busy for something like that to have a serious impact

Having said all of that, I think there will be increasingly innovative ways of incorporating trackers on bikes, and that would arguably be a much more straightforward way of "checking" bikes (although certainly not foolproof)

AndrewJRenko

The Davestator wrote: »

Would a log book similar to a car not work?
I.e - Its illegal to sell or advertise a bike without a logbook number being entered?

It's unworkable. Think of the number of bikes being bought and sold legitimately for €40 or €50. You'd be better off having a logbook for smart phones or laptops.

Tombo2001

Beasty wrote: »

I don't think that's practicable. How many bikes are there out there? How many have been thrown out when past their sell-by date? Who is going to manage all of this? Who is going to remember where they put their paperwork

In theory it's all already there with frame numbers, but how many actually make a note of that, and how many of those can remember where they put it?

At the top end I suspect owners are typically very careful, and maybe do record that sort of stuff. However if someone managed to nick a dozen €5k+ racing bikes it's not inconceivable they could find their way onto 2nd hand markets in other countries

It works with cars as there are serious penalties for not having the records, and the likes of engine numbers are stored by relevant government authorities. Think of the GDPR requirements though when you are often talking under 18yos who "keep" the bikes

Again there's the likes of bikeregister.com which is out there for people to record details, but who ever bothers checking there when they are buying a bike?

Ultimately I think we are all too lazy/busy for something like that to have a serious impact

Having said all of that, I think there will be increasingly innovative ways of incorporating trackers on bikes, and that would arguably be a much more straightforward way of "checking" bikes (although certainly not foolproof)

Why is the fall back always on the owner for this.

Shops don't have to record the registration number of the bikes they sell....

The garda say a small percent of owners remember their registration number, but sure that is irrelevant if 99% of stolen bikes aren't retrieved by the gardai.....

Beasty

Tombo2001 wrote: »

Why is the fall back always on the owner for this.

No different with any form of "insurance" - you get what you pay for. If you want retailers to manage all this, I'm sure they will do it - for a price

blackwhite

shutup wrote: »

I just saw one about five years ago. Was so bad you wouldn’t have wanted anything on offer. Broken up bikes missing parts.
With thousands of bikes stolen and not reunited with rightful owners how could they not have anything decent for sale? Very suspicious!!

I had a bike stolen from outside Tesco in Galway back when I was in college (almost 20 years ago).

Went into Mill St. station to report it stolen the following day, and was told to call back in a week to see if they picked anything up.

When I returned to them I was brought out back to a storage room and told to see if mine was in the dozens of bikes there. When I said I didn't see it there I was told "Are you sure - there's a few matching your description there alright. Just take one of them"

Easy way for them to improve the "solved" stats on reported crime.

Macy0161

Tombo2001 wrote: »

Why is the fall back always on the owner for this.

Shops don't have to record the registration number of the bikes they sell....

The garda say a small percent of owners remember their registration number, but sure that is irrelevant if 99% of stolen bikes aren't retrieved by the gardai.....

Would most of them know where to find the frame number, or bother to check? How many would then record it on pulse?

fwiw, I'm pretty sure my LBS does record frame number. They've a computer system, which changed hands with the shop management.

It's 20 odd years since I lived in the UK, but at the time, frame marking with post code was the big thing. We all have eircodes now...

magicbastarder

Tombo2001 wrote: »

Why is the fall back always on the owner for this.

Shops don't have to record the registration number of the bikes they sell....

The garda say a small percent of owners remember their registration number, but sure that is irrelevant if 99% of stolen bikes aren't retrieved by the gardai.....

are there any precedents for a system which doesn't involve the owner to have to report the specific details of the item stolen from them?

Tombo2001

magicbastarder wrote: »

are there any precedents for a system which doesn't involve the owner to have to report the specific details of the item stolen from them?

No - I think not.

But to be devils advocate - lets ignore the bike owners that don't have the registration number, and focus on those that have recorded it.

Lets assume that's 30% of bike owners. And probably higher where a bike is worth €500 or higher.

What we have at the moment is a problem - which is that

(I) people are stealing bikes with enormous frequency because (II) they are easy to sell.

We can do very little about (I). Bikes are easy to steal, even with €80 U-locks.

We can do something about (II).

Personally I think the online used goods websites are a big part of the problem, and I think some bike shops will buy a good used bike if someone offers it to them. I've no evidence for the latter - but the former, its pretty clear that this is happening.

To go back to the 30% of bike owners that have recorded the registration.

At the moment - the registration code is useless to these bike owners, as there is no traceability. For the bikes I had stolen recently, I would feel that having the registration number might increase the chance of recovering it from 0.1% to 0.3%.

If however if it become mandatory to display the registration code when conducting a second hand sale then
(I) this should be good for the vendor, as they can show that they bought this particular bike (via the receipt with unique registration code).
(II) it makes it much harder for stolen bikes to be sold, as you would be advertising the registration code to the rightful owner.

Which in turn is a deterrent to stealing the bike in the first place.

To go back to the original point - a lot of this is down to awareness. A lot of people buy bikes on the BTW scheme, they haven't owned a bike before and may not know that registration numbers even exist.

What I've described above is a 'build it and they will come' solution.

If registration number becomes a real solution to theft - which it currently isn't - then people will find more value in recording it.

The issue of bike theft in my view is bigger than it seems - as a lot of people don't replace the bike when its stolen. Instead, they just stop cycling.

A big part of this is because they buy a bike for €300 on BTW, but when its stolen the same bike is costing them €600 to replace.

If the govt values the BTW scheme and the health benefits it brings, then this problem needs to be tackled.

AndrewJRenko

Macy0161 wrote: »

It's 20 odd years since I lived in the UK, but at the time, frame marking with post code was the big thing. We all have eircodes now...

Unlike post codes, Eircodes point to a single physical house. There is actually a security risk in marking bikes with Eircodes. If someone sees your bike on the street, they can get your Eircode and they know where to find your bike at night.

Seth Brundle

Tombo2001 wrote: »

If however if it become mandatory to display the registration code when conducting a second hand sale then
(I) this should be good for the vendor, as they can show that they bought this particular bike (via the receipt with unique registration code).
(II) it makes it much harder for stolen bikes to be sold, as you would be advertising the registration code to the rightful owner.

You would end up with people having to enter an unverifiable number when creating an advert.
People will just copy a code from another advert or make up a code.
Just like the insurance number when taxing a car online!

AndrewJRenko

Seth Brundle wrote: »

You would end up with people having to enter an unverifiable number when creating an advert.
People will just copy a code from another advert or make up a code.
Just like the insurance number when taxing a car online!

There is a risk, but at a minimum, this would mean that it be very obvious to the buyer that the purchased bike is stolen.


It would also make it very easy for Gardai, or even crowd sourcing sting operations.

griffin100

Where do stolen bikes go?????

I had three bike stolen in 2015. https://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=96404921

One of them turned up last year in a bike shop in Donegal, with the same tyres, running gear, bottle cages, etc. It had obviously been stoted somewhere and never been ridden since it was nicked. I spotted it on DoneDeal. I contacted the Gardai who took it from the shop The shop contested ownership and said they bought it legit from someone. As my local Garda hadn't bothered completing a Pulse report for the theft the Garda in Donegal retained the bike. That was a year ago and I haven't been able to get anything back from them since.

Moral of the story (leaving aside Garda related comments)? Not all stolen bikes are sold between scrotes. Some bikes are stored a while and then sold on.