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Seattle vigilante reuniting stolen bikes with their owners
- dkopi 11y ago"The married engineer, who is in his 30s, and has been quietly tracking down stolen bikes for the last year, spoke to the Guardian on the condition of anonymity amid increasing curiosity about his identity, motives and methodology." I'm guessing the main reason he wants anonymity isn't from criminals, but from his family, who would obviously kill him if they knew how much danger he's putting himself into.
- have_faith 11y agoI'm surprised he let them publish a photo of him at all, the sunglasses aren't going to stop people recognising him.
- CapitalistCartr 11y agoPlus the article mentions he's a "married engineer, who is in his 30s", a bicycling enthusiast, and six feet, four inches tall. That, combined with the photo, is a pretty thorough description.
- jldugger 11y agoAssuming that's true, or the photo is legit.
- munificent 11y ago> "married engineer, who is in his 30s", a bicycling enthusiast, and six feet, four inches tall. That, combined with the photo, is a pretty thorough description. Not here in Seattle, it isn't!
- gumby 11y agoLuckily for him it's unlikely bike thieves are reading the guardian or, I hope, HN.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- 2muchcoffeeman 11y agoIs it really though? Sometimes I don't recognise people I see regularly because I'm only used to seeing them in specific contexts. The photo here isn't that clear and he's wearing quite large sunglasses. If we put him in jeans, without the glasses and off a bike I'm pretty sure no one who's read the article could pick him out.
- usrusr 11y agoWon't help thieves recognize his online identity as a potential buyer. Once he is actually confronting them there really is not much difference between "random guy accusing me of selling a stolen bike" and "damn it's the bicycle batman, accusing me of selling a stolen bike".
- upofadown 11y agoA guy out stealing bikes is going to do everything they possibly can to avoid getting in a fight with someone. There is simply no profit in it for such low stakes.
- omginternets 11y agoYou're assuming thieves are acting rationally.
- na85 11y agoThey are. They're choosing the rational response when balancing a low-risk, high-reward activity such as bicycle theft.
- x0x0 11y agoAnd yet... A friend was walking in soma watching a video on his iphone. He noticed someone peering over his shoulder; the dude grabbed the iphone and took off. My friend chased him, and this is where it gets interesting. The thief, instead of outrunning my friend and/or just dropping the phone, punched my friend. My friend plus a bystander who saw the punch ended up chasing the thief down. SF police don't give a fuck less about a stolen iphone, but that punch? The thief is doing 2-4 years.
- lostlogin 11y agoThis isn't a good thing - even if the thief serves half that there is no scenario where that outcome is a net benefit to society. However this view of mine may be venturing too far into politics.
- steve19 11y agoI think it's good that as a society we do not lock people up for years for stealing a phone. But I would love to hear from you what we should do of the people who commit assault? What is a woman was punched? or a minority (because they were a minority)? Do you honestly believe that prison for assault does not deter would be assaulters?
- loeg 11y agoBike thieves are hardly organized criminals with weapons. Probably mostly homeless or very poor people without better ideas. It's a very low margin crime.
- snowwindwaves 11y agoIn British Columbia there is organized bike theft. The police caught a group of thieves who had rented a cube van and driven up to whistler from Vancouver and stolen half a dozen bikes. One of the bikes was a police "bait bike" with a tracking device. The Mounties care! http://globalnews.ca/news/785241/bait-bike-leads-whistler-police-to-bust-alleged-thieves/ http://globalnews.ca/news/785241/bait-bike-leads-whistler-po...
- vostrocity 11y agoMaybe not organized, but usually specialized. To steal a bike, you need a set of tools (like a modified car jack http://www.citylab.com/navigator/2014/10/your-u-lock-is-basically-worthless-but-dont-worry/381818/ http://www.citylab.com/navigator/2014/10/your-u-lock-is-basi...) and knowledge of where to sell the parts.
- mc808 11y agoI wonder if there is more that bicycle manufacturers/dealers can do to prevent theft or help recover stolen bikes - not because they're obligated but just to improve sales. Especially as the price approaches four digits, "what if this gets stolen?" has to be near the top of most potential buyers' list of concerns and probably chills sales to some degree.
- tlrobinson 11y agoExploding bike seats? http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZYlBT1d_GWo http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZYlBT1d_GWo Seriously though, GPS receivers and GSM radios are a few dollars each these days. Seems like an easy thing to hide in the frame (of course a thief could still part out everything except the frame)
- dpark 11y agoThe problem is then you need to remember to keep your bike's GPS tracker charged. Your bike isn't carrying a large capacity 12V battery the way your car is.
- marcoperaza 11y agoI wonder if you could do the same thing a car does, charge the battery with the engine.
- dpark 11y agoFor electric-assist bikes, the GPS tracking could be worthwhile. For other bikes, the complexity of the system seems not worth it. It's probably more cost effective to just insure the bike and not have a small generator, battery, GPS, and wires all over. For ultralight racing bikes, definitely not, but those are probably a minority even in cycling-friendly cities like Seattle.
- ptaipale 11y agoPut the GPS tracker + battery in the headlight of a bike with hub dynamo... the tracker would work, you can activate it for just a few munutes a few times a day. But if the police does not care, it is not useful.
- BEEdwards 11y agoThis is an awesome thing for him to be doing, but I don't understand why he needed to step up and do it. The thieves post in a public place basically admitting that they stole the item and are more than willing to meet up... Why did it take a third party to start doing it?
- ck2 11y agoBecause the police simply do not care about bike thefts so the criminals know they can get away with it.
- rwmj 11y agoI think the question of the OP is why don't the police do anything? It is their job after all.
- sgift 11y agoNot enough police to do something against every crime, so they have to decide which ones they handle and bike crimes often are not the ones which are taken. There's a simple solution, but it involves taxpayer money (which is usually frowned upon here): Hire more police.
- fiatmoney 11y agoIt's their job to do what they're told. If the city government decided Bike Crime was a top priority, cops got promotions based on how many bikes they recaptured, etc. then presumably they would be more active. Conversely, when the government decides it doesn't want a law enforced it's very easy to make that clear. Laws are an excuse to be able to target kinds of activity the government wants to target at the time; it's more "laws enabling cops" than "cops enforcing laws". That's why drug laws are so handy; all you have to do is say "I smelled marijuana" and you get to throw in jail whichever problem population you're targeting at the moment.
- archgoon 11y ago
- ck2 11y agoNews people always smugly expose people who should be anonymous, I wonder if he knew they were going to print a photo of him. One day the intersection of super easy access guns with the combined lack of intelligence/respect of a bike thief is going to make things end very badly for the good guys.
- matthiasl 11y ago"I wonder if he knew they were going to print a photo of him." The fourth paragraph of the article starts with "He was however happy for the Guardian to publish a photograph of him".
- maaaats 11y agoIn Norway we have a central register where you can add your bike. Each bike has a serial number engraved in the frame which is used for registering it. In an ideal world, everyone would check the bike they are buying in this register and see if it is reported stolen or not. Of course, this doesn't happen, but the opportunity of it I think helps deterring people somewhat for stealing a bike to resell it. And last year in my town there was a "big bust" where they found a lot of bikes. Those who had registered their bikes could easily get them back.
- vinay427 11y agoMany local police forces (towns, cities, universities, etc.) in the US have this type of register using the serial number but I doubt that it is centrally accessible. Instead, they usually provide a sticker with the police department name/logo that one applies on the frame to identify where it's from. This is certainly not an ideal solution; I would much rather have something like vehicle licensing but free, managed by states or the federal government, which seems more in line with what you mentioned. Edit: Just found this supposedly national registry: https://www.nationalbikeregistry.com/ https://www.nationalbikeregistry.com/
- swimfar 11y agoBut it appears that only law enforcement have access to the database. It would be much more effective if people were able use it to do a search to see if a bike was reported stolen or not. It may be because it has been around for a long time and was never updated to have an internet interface. They say they are the "only true national database" (whatever that means), but I'm sure other (non-true) ones popped up because of this limitation.
- bhance 11y agoNobody uses the NBR .., they're basically just selling stickers. When you dig into how many LE agencies use them, it's like ... six. Maybe even less. BikeIndex.org, though - which is mentioned in the article because that's what the batman is referencing - is totally open and has over 220+ national partners and over 70k bikes on file.
- tzs 11y agoThe economics of bike theft are interesting. See this article: http://blog.priceonomics.com/post/30393216796/what-happens-to-stolen-bicycles http://blog.priceonomics.com/post/30393216796/what-happens-t... Here is the HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4444708 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4444708
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- recivorecivo 11y agoWhy not just remove ego from humanity?
- JustSomeNobody 11y agoWhy do people always want to know the person's identity? This is so selfish. I feel they either want to know it because they want to be the first to know or they just hate not knowing. Shallow and selfish. Yuck.
- jcoffland 11y agoDo you have a lot of experience with vigilante exposers?
- wayneotau 11y agoSo awesome! I like this as a service I'd pay money for
- chrischen 11y agoSounds like a problem for neural networks to solve!
- jessaustin 11y agoOf the first 10 or so people he helped, most were from out of town... This rings true to me. I once rented a bike during the second week I lived in a particular city, while I was waiting for my bicycles to be shipped. That bike got stolen, largely thanks to the shitty lock the bike shop included in the rental. I wouldn't be surprised if that shop just bought the bike back from the thief, after charging me the new price for a seriously used POS bike, but I certainly didn't darken their door again. Later on, after I had lived in that city for a year or so, an admitted bike thief told me straight up, "oh yeah we know that bike is yours and we see you around all the time and you seem ok so we probably wouldn't ever mess with it." Thanks, I guess?
- viraptor 11y agoWait, are there bike rentals with no insurance from theft? Most of the places I rented from had some policy about it. Otherwise that just looks like a setup for some protection racket.
- honksillet 11y agoThe Seattle police should be ashamed of themselves.
- stewartbutler 11y agoI have the feeling that someone trying this in Atlanta would just get themselves shot. Hopefully nobody around here is inspired by this.
- ashitlerferad 11y agoIt is probably time to eliminate bikes from the list of things that can be considered "property". It should be illegal to lock up a bike or "own" one.
- Retra 11y agoThat sounds absurdly arbitrary.
- ashitlerferad 11y agoI dream of a future without bike scarcity.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]