8 ms·

This is such a frustrating issue. I understand that from a financial perspective it makes no sense to try and stop people stealing bikes or vandalising cities a

by Paul_S 10y ago

This is such a frustrating issue. I understand that from a financial perspective it makes no sense to try and stop people stealing bikes or vandalising cities and I'm falling over myself trying to find a justification for doing so anyway but has any city ever tried?

eikenberry 10y ago
New York had a big anti-vandalism push as part of Giuliani's "broken window" based campaign to clean up the city.
PhasmaFelis 10y ago
On this scale, whether it makes financial sense shouldn't matter. Law enforcement is a public service, not a profit initiative.
- tikhonj 10y ago
  No, economics still applies because we only have a finite amount of resources—funding, equipment, officers—and we need to distribute them intelligently to cover all the functions we expect from law enforcement. It wouldn't make sense for a small police department to spend $1 million on bike thefts which add up to $10,000 stolen a year (and nobody injured/killed): it would be a terrible use of tax dollars and would probably require neglecting other police duties. Even though government service is not run for profit, it still has to deal with scarcity, so economic and financial considerations still apply.
  - allendoerfer 10y ago
    Usually those problems have the same root. Denmark was mentioned. It is not like the allocated better, they do better in almost every regard.
bdr 10y ago
I think a probabilistic argument makes sense. You don't have to pursue 100% of bike thefts to discourage them.
crispyambulance 10y ago
Bikes are just like any other stolen item. They typically end up with brokers who warehouse and distribute these goods in ways that are hard to scrutinize. The problem is that there will always be crackheads and there will always be sketchy people that willing to transact stolen goods. Its like a cosmic-scale version of wack-a-mole. The best way to deal with bike theft is for owners to get wise about how they store and lock their bikes. Some amount of common sense about bike choice helps too. If you can afford a $3000 bike you can also afford a secondary $100 bike that doesn't make bike thieves salivate while you're grocery shopping.
- Animats 10y ago
  If the brokers aren't being found, the police aren't doing their job. GPS trackers for bicycles are now down to $47.[1] When you find more than one stolen bike at one location, you've got something. This worked for cars. Lojack, with their hidden transponder, caused a significant reduction in auto thefts. Lojack claims a 90% recovery rate. The main problem for bicycles is battery life. Someone needs to design a system which needs almost no power until the bicycle is stolen. Lojack, which is a pre-GPS technology, does something like that. Their unit normally isn't transmitting. It's just listening to FM broadcast station subcarriers for its own serial number. When a car with Lojack is stolen, Lojack, which is plugged into police stolen car databases, has their FM stations broadcast the serial number repeatedly. The addressed Lojack unit wakes up and starts transmitting. Lojack makes a deal with police departments to put Lojack receivers in police cars. These light up when there's a transmitting stolen car in range. You could do this today by connecting a digital pager to a GPS/GSM location transmitter. The GPS/GSM unit is normally off, and only turns on when the pager wakes it up. You can get six weeks of standby time on a digital pager easily. Add a power-from-motion device and you could probably keep the pager running indefinitely, as long as the bike gets some use. OK, IoT crowd, get moving. [1] https://www.amazon.com/Bicycle-GPS-Tracker-GPS305-Real-time/dp/B00MM01DCA https://www.amazon.com/Bicycle-GPS-Tracker-GPS305-Real-time/...
  - crispyambulance 10y ago
    Car-theft is alive and still doing quite well in spite of lojack and other technologies. Admittedly, cars today are harder to steal for a wide variety of reasons. Knowing approximately where the bike is is only 1/3 of the battle. You still have to physically put your hands on it and remove it from whoever has it. I applaud the intent of a bike "lojack" but good luck getting the police to lift a finger when your bike tells you where it is. That 50 bucks is better spent on a good U-lock upgrade.
ScottBurson 10y ago
Actually it does make financial sense. Here's why. Bike theft in many places now has an enormous reward/risk ratio not because the reward is large but because the risk is so minuscule -- small enough to be considered zero. People tend to think that the police would have to solve and prosecute a large fraction of bike thefts to deter the crime effectively, but that's probably not true. Any chance at all of being caught would cut the reward/risk ratio by two or three orders of magnitude, at least. Because the reward for the crime is relatively small, compared to other things a professional thief could be doing, that is likely to serve as a sufficient deterrent in many cases. I've read that this has been tried somewhere and seems to work, though I don't recall the details. A municipality just needs to dedicate a small fraction of its resources to solving as many bike thefts as possible. Even if that's a small fraction of the total, it can be enough to turn the tide.
- zerooneinfinity 10y ago
  Same problem with people hopping turnstyles in the 80's. They increased the severity of the punishment and lo behold the crime went down.
  - brianwawok 10y ago
    Some people were having trouble with guys on the corner smoking pot in the 80s. So we started the war in drugs. Lo And behold crime went down.... Oh wait..
    - LeifCarrotson 10y ago
      I know you're being facetious, but it's much more difficult to evaluate risk/rewards ratio for drug use, and the motivation for engaging in it is less linked to this ratio than for other crimes. Though I say that, and think back to Prohibition... which didn't involve the same addictive properties to which I'd attribute these properties of the War on Drugs, so I doubt myself.
      - brianwawok 10y ago
ilaksh 10y ago
I am asking this 100% seriously. I have never actually seen police helping anyone -- only seen them harrassing or extorting money (outright or via bogus traffic citations). I have come to the conclusion that the idea of a police force that is really there to help citizens may be a myth.
bfuller 10y ago
Someone posted a link in this thread about the Austin pd breaking up a bicycle theft ring. The problem is, as with all theft, unless someone witnesses the crime as it is occurring by the time the cop gets to the scene it is too late to find the bike. Experienced thieves will scope out bikes ahead of time and have a place to stash them quickly, and even if the police do arrive quickly, are they supposed to interrogate every person on a bike to check if it is stolen? Basically they need to focus on these theft rings that steal bikes en masse and move them to another region to sell. I have on more than 3 or 4 times seen a truck with the bed FULL of bikes I'm talking stacked 6 feet high with a cage around the bed. Where did all those bikes come from? And ive never seen a decent bike in the stack. Mostly children's bikes (easiest to steal as I imagine children don't secure their bikes very well) and Wal Mart beaters.
- barrkel 10y ago
  The usual way to find organised thieves is with a decoy bike in a high theft area, with surveillance and police lying in wait.
- rangibaby 10y ago
  > are they supposed to interrogate every person on a bike to check if it is stolen? This is what Japanese cops do. Every bike is registered to a name, and they radio to check the registered name and frame number against your id. It takes about five minutes. My bike has been stolen three times (probably by different people) and they recovered it twice and caught the thief the third time.
  - throwaway7767 10y ago
    Wow, sounds like being a cyclist in Japan is hell. I've had a bike stolen, and it sucks, but not nearly as much as it would suck to be stopped by police all the time and expected to prove ownership of my bike.
    - rangibaby 10y ago
      It's a hassle, but the check is over in 5 minutes. Show your photo id (which Japanese usually carry, and foreigners are required to) and if the names match you're good to go. If the bike isn't reported stolen and your ID is good they'll send you on your way. If it's reported stolen you'll have to go to the police station to do some paperwork even if it is your bike.
bfuller 10y ago
Someone posted a link in this thread about the Austin pd breaking up a bicycle theft ring. The problem is, as with all theft, unless someone witnesses the crime as it is occurring by the time the cop gets to the scene it is too late to find the bike. Experienced thieves will scope out bikes ahead of time and have a place to stash them quickly, and even if the police do arrive quickly, are they supposed to interrogate every person on a bike to check if it is stolen? Basically they need to focus on these theft rings that steal bikes en masse and move them to another region to sell. I have on more than 3 or 4 times seen a truck with the bed FULL of bikes I'm talking stacked 6 feet high with a cage around the bed. Where did all those bikes come from? And ive never seen a decent bike in the stack. Mostly children's bikes (easiest to steal as I imagine children don't secure their bikes very well) and Wal Mart beaters.

by Paul_S 10y ago

eikenberry 10y ago

New York had a big anti-vandalism push as part of Giuliani's "broken window" based campaign to clean up the city.

PhasmaFelis 10y ago

On this scale, whether it makes financial sense shouldn't matter. Law enforcement is a public service, not a profit initiative.

tikhonj 10y ago
No, economics still applies because we only have a finite amount of resources—funding, equipment, officers—and we need to distribute them intelligently to cover all the functions we expect from law enforcement. It wouldn't make sense for a small police department to spend $1 million on bike thefts which add up to $10,000 stolen a year (and nobody injured/killed): it would be a terrible use of tax dollars and would probably require neglecting other police duties. Even though government service is not run for profit, it still has to deal with scarcity, so economic and financial considerations still apply.
- allendoerfer 10y ago
  Usually those problems have the same root. Denmark was mentioned. It is not like the allocated better, they do better in almost every regard.

bdr 10y ago

I think a probabilistic argument makes sense. You don't have to pursue 100% of bike thefts to discourage them.

crispyambulance 10y ago

Bikes are just like any other stolen item. They typically end up with brokers who warehouse and distribute these goods in ways that are hard to scrutinize. The problem is that there will always be crackheads and there will always be sketchy people that willing to transact stolen goods. Its like a cosmic-scale version of wack-a-mole. The best way to deal with bike theft is for owners to get wise about how they store and lock their bikes. Some amount of common sense about bike choice helps too. If you can afford a $3000 bike you can also afford a secondary $100 bike that doesn't make bike thieves salivate while you're grocery shopping.

Animats 10y ago
If the brokers aren't being found, the police aren't doing their job. GPS trackers for bicycles are now down to $47.[1] When you find more than one stolen bike at one location, you've got something. This worked for cars. Lojack, with their hidden transponder, caused a significant reduction in auto thefts. Lojack claims a 90% recovery rate. The main problem for bicycles is battery life. Someone needs to design a system which needs almost no power until the bicycle is stolen. Lojack, which is a pre-GPS technology, does something like that. Their unit normally isn't transmitting. It's just listening to FM broadcast station subcarriers for its own serial number. When a car with Lojack is stolen, Lojack, which is plugged into police stolen car databases, has their FM stations broadcast the serial number repeatedly. The addressed Lojack unit wakes up and starts transmitting. Lojack makes a deal with police departments to put Lojack receivers in police cars. These light up when there's a transmitting stolen car in range. You could do this today by connecting a digital pager to a GPS/GSM location transmitter. The GPS/GSM unit is normally off, and only turns on when the pager wakes it up. You can get six weeks of standby time on a digital pager easily. Add a power-from-motion device and you could probably keep the pager running indefinitely, as long as the bike gets some use. OK, IoT crowd, get moving. [1] https://www.amazon.com/Bicycle-GPS-Tracker-GPS305-Real-time/dp/B00MM01DCA https://www.amazon.com/Bicycle-GPS-Tracker-GPS305-Real-time/...
- crispyambulance 10y ago
  Car-theft is alive and still doing quite well in spite of lojack and other technologies. Admittedly, cars today are harder to steal for a wide variety of reasons. Knowing approximately where the bike is is only 1/3 of the battle. You still have to physically put your hands on it and remove it from whoever has it. I applaud the intent of a bike "lojack" but good luck getting the police to lift a finger when your bike tells you where it is. That 50 bucks is better spent on a good U-lock upgrade.

ScottBurson 10y ago

Actually it does make financial sense. Here's why. Bike theft in many places now has an enormous reward/risk ratio not because the reward is large but because the risk is so minuscule -- small enough to be considered zero. People tend to think that the police would have to solve and prosecute a large fraction of bike thefts to deter the crime effectively, but that's probably not true. Any chance at all of being caught would cut the reward/risk ratio by two or three orders of magnitude, at least. Because the reward for the crime is relatively small, compared to other things a professional thief could be doing, that is likely to serve as a sufficient deterrent in many cases. I've read that this has been tried somewhere and seems to work, though I don't recall the details. A municipality just needs to dedicate a small fraction of its resources to solving as many bike thefts as possible. Even if that's a small fraction of the total, it can be enough to turn the tide.

zerooneinfinity 10y ago
Same problem with people hopping turnstyles in the 80's. They increased the severity of the punishment and lo behold the crime went down.
- brianwawok 10y ago
  Some people were having trouble with guys on the corner smoking pot in the 80s. So we started the war in drugs. Lo And behold crime went down.... Oh wait..
  - LeifCarrotson 10y ago
    I know you're being facetious, but it's much more difficult to evaluate risk/rewards ratio for drug use, and the motivation for engaging in it is less linked to this ratio than for other crimes. Though I say that, and think back to Prohibition... which didn't involve the same addictive properties to which I'd attribute these properties of the War on Drugs, so I doubt myself.
    - brianwawok 10y ago

ilaksh 10y ago

I am asking this 100% seriously. I have never actually seen police helping anyone -- only seen them harrassing or extorting money (outright or via bogus traffic citations). I have come to the conclusion that the idea of a police force that is really there to help citizens may be a myth.

bfuller 10y ago

Someone posted a link in this thread about the Austin pd breaking up a bicycle theft ring. The problem is, as with all theft, unless someone witnesses the crime as it is occurring by the time the cop gets to the scene it is too late to find the bike. Experienced thieves will scope out bikes ahead of time and have a place to stash them quickly, and even if the police do arrive quickly, are they supposed to interrogate every person on a bike to check if it is stolen? Basically they need to focus on these theft rings that steal bikes en masse and move them to another region to sell. I have on more than 3 or 4 times seen a truck with the bed FULL of bikes I'm talking stacked 6 feet high with a cage around the bed. Where did all those bikes come from? And ive never seen a decent bike in the stack. Mostly children's bikes (easiest to steal as I imagine children don't secure their bikes very well) and Wal Mart beaters.

barrkel 10y ago
The usual way to find organised thieves is with a decoy bike in a high theft area, with surveillance and police lying in wait.
rangibaby 10y ago
> are they supposed to interrogate every person on a bike to check if it is stolen? This is what Japanese cops do. Every bike is registered to a name, and they radio to check the registered name and frame number against your id. It takes about five minutes. My bike has been stolen three times (probably by different people) and they recovered it twice and caught the thief the third time.
- throwaway7767 10y ago
  Wow, sounds like being a cyclist in Japan is hell. I've had a bike stolen, and it sucks, but not nearly as much as it would suck to be stopped by police all the time and expected to prove ownership of my bike.
  - rangibaby 10y ago
    It's a hassle, but the check is over in 5 minutes. Show your photo id (which Japanese usually carry, and foreigners are required to) and if the names match you're good to go. If the bike isn't reported stolen and your ID is good they'll send you on your way. If it's reported stolen you'll have to go to the police station to do some paperwork even if it is your bike.

bfuller 10y ago