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Bike theft seems like one of those quality-of-life crimes (like graffiti and coercive squeegee-monkeys) that's begging for some kind of creative enforcement str
by frankus 14y ago
Bike theft seems like one of those quality-of-life crimes (like graffiti and coercive squeegee-monkeys) that's begging for some kind of creative enforcement strategy.
- If there's an open-air bike market at 7th and Market, it seems like you could use some of the same strategies that have been used to shut down open-air drug markets.
- Police in the greater Vancouver area have had a lot of success with bait cars, but I'm not aware of bait bikes being used more than experimentally (cf. tocatchabiketheif.com)
- If one could devise a concentrated enforcement strategy, one might not need to "take six guys off a murder" for very long. Basically the idea would be to tip a high-crime-low-probability-of-punishment equilibrium and into a low-crime-high-probability-of-punishment equilibrium that should presumably remain equally stable. One approach would be to target a geographic area and communicate (and follow through on) a threat to throw the book at anyone caught stealing a bike.
(pretty much all of these are stolen from the book When Brute Force Fails).
- mootothemax 14y agoI think the problem is not catching the bike thieves, more that the punishment given for stealing bikes is minimal, so it's not worth the police doing much about it.
- aidian 14y agoIn Cali, theft of anything under $400 in value is a misdemeanor...that means stealing your typical bike under about $1000 isn't a major crime.
- ethermal 14y agoBut you could make possession of stolen property (the bike) a major crime with prison and financial punishment and you weaken the demand side of things. Then using RFID or similar technology, you could embed a RFID tag somewhere in the frame. Then allow someone to report a stolen bike with a police report, very similar to a stolen vehicle report and then using remote scanners you could scan for stolen bikes very easily. All it takes is fear of a stolen bike to scare away potential buyers.
- Cass 14y agoThe US already proportionally has the most prisoners out of any country in the world, and I'm wary of any solution that includes making that problem worse. That kind of thing has giant socioeconomic costs and, looking at the crime rates, doesn't seem to work at making the country safer. I just don't think that finding yet another reason to put a whole bunch of people in prison (average cost per month between $2000 and $4000 at a quick google) over a bike worth $1000 is really going to make anything better in the long run.
- dmm 14y agoThe US also has a lot of crime. More people need to be in prison.
- spacemanaki 14y agoCare to back that up? Does the US really have that much more crime that justifies locking up more people? Recent stuff I've read on this agrees with Cass (http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2012/01/30/120130crat_atlarge_gopnik?currentPage=all http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2012/01/30/120...).
- tylee78 14y agocompared to Germany the percentage of criminals seems the same - it's just that our criminals are on the streets, yours in prison.
- pfedor 14y agodmm's point was made by several people in the comments thread for the very article you cite, some of them quoting statistics: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3691372 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3691372 tl;dr: In the U.S. in only 20% of murder cases the perpetrator is found and convicted of murder, compared with (allegedly) 90% in Japan. At the same time, even if all non-violent offenders (that includes all drug offenses) were released from prisons in the U.S. tomorrow, the U.S. would still have double the incarceration rate of Western Europe. I don't know enough to have an opinion either way, but intuitively this message has a true ring to it: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3696583 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3696583
- zurn 14y agoIncreasing severity of penalties doesn't generally work for cutting recidivism (and you'd have to steal a lot of bikes to make the caused harm proportionate to jail time for a person, even if you subscribe to the lizard brain "revenge" school of thought on punishment).
- davidw 14y agoI heard a story, but I have no idea whether it's true: bike shop in San Francisco leaves very shiny, high end bike outside. Thief hops on bike, heads down hill to make a quick getaway. Thief soon discovers that the bicycle's brake cables are not connected. CRASH.
- pmahoney 14y agoI believe that it's illegal to booby-trap one's house, and I've heard of (apocryphal?) cases of burglars suing homeowners for injuries sustained during a burglary... I imagine such a brake-less bike would fall in that category.
- wiredfool 14y agoThieves should avoid stealing fixies then. Especially from the top of a hill.
- davidw 14y agoIt wasn't a fixed gear bicycle: you can obviously bring one of those to a halt by preventing the pedals from going around.
- jlgreco 14y agohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katko_v._Briney http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katko_v._Briney This is the only case I could find on wikipedia. Placing a bicycle outside with no brakes hooked up is a far cry from rigging a spring loaded shotgun to the door of an unoccupied building. It isn't even unheard of for people to legitimately (well, not legally I think...) ride bicycles without brakes, so where would you draw the line? If the police used a Ford Pinto as a bate car, could they be similarly at fault?
- nnnnnnnn 14y agoI put good odds on a jury drawing the line by putting the shopowner in considerable debt if not in jail.
- seany 14y ago"- Police in the greater Vancouver area have had a lot of success with bait cars, but I'm not aware of bait bikes being used more than experimentally" I know Santa Clara PD has (is?) using bait bikes to some extent. AFAIK the units themselves are made by pegtech.com .
- DannoHung 14y agoHow about a pressurized U-lock that releases a neon-pink paint cloud if the cylinder or restraining bar is cut-through? I guess the trick would be making it get on the thief and all over the bicycle. The best would be if it also stank to high heaven.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- buffportion 14y agoThat's great, until you lose your key
- DenisM 14y agoThat argument applies to any effective antitheft device. Shall we take it you're against all effective antitheft devices in general?
- stbtrax 14y agoIf you lose your key to your U-Lock, you cut it off. If you lose the key to your frame... saw your bike in half?
- DenisM 14y agoYou plan ahead. I made duplicate keys to my condo and my car and gave them to a couple friends who can be relied on. In a system with electronic lock you could have unique factory key stored at the manufacturer, and recovered for a $30 fee upon inspection of id/receipt/etc.
- vitalique 14y agoReally? Wrap it up with a newspaper and do whatever those bad guys usually do to the U-locks. Just make sure it's your bike.
- roguecoder 14y ago
- Someone 14y agoNot in Vancouver or even on the new continent, but http://translate.google.nl/translate?sl=nl&tl=en&u=http%3A//www.rechtsvordering.nl/lokfiets-arrest http://translate.google.nl/translate?sl=nl&tl=en&u=h... shows an arrest from the Dutch supreme court on bait bicycles ("lokfietsen") that shows the method gets used.
- dimitar 14y agoThe Netherlands seems to be a good place look if there are any solutions - they have a huge percentage of people using bicycles in their cities.
- rickmb 14y agoAnd we have a huge bike theft issue that's been going on for decades. Keep looking... Seriously, the only things that have somewhat alleviated the problem is better locks and guarded bike parking facilities.
- fghh45sdfhr3 14y agoBike theft seems like one of those quality-of-life crimes (like graffiti and coercive squeegee-monkeys) that's begging for some kind of creative enforcement strategy. Or just plain old boring regular enforcement, like Germany and Japan have, which is how they end up with a far lower crime rate than the US or the UK for example. (They also have a better social safety net, that's part of their low crime rates too.)
- tadfisher 14y agoViolent crime, maybe, but bike theft is pretty common in Japanese cities. It's not so organized as it is in the West, but usually drunk people who "borrow" bikes to get home.
- eplanit 14y agoI disagree. I spend much of my time working in Japan, and notice that people rarely ever lock their bikes, and am told by the locals that bicycle theft (and theft, in general) is rare. I have personally witnessed, in fact, a colleague leave a laptop on a bench in a busy district of Tokyo and when he realized it _an hour later_ he returned to find the laptop there, untouched. There's a lot of cultural difference to factor into the analysis. I think the article holds true for the U.S., and especially the Bay Area. I've had my own bicycle stolen there (despite a hefty U-lock).
- wisty 14y agoAlso, the Japanese police can hold you for 23 days without trial or formal accusation, if they suspect you stole a bicycle. If you are charged, you can choose a no-jury trial, or a jury trial with no right to appeal; and Japan has an extremely high conviction rate (though few people are actually charged, the prosecutors are very selective). If you see a laptop on a park bench, you either leave it or call the police. If you pick it (to check the browser for the owner's email address) and a policeman catches you with it (and they don't need a warrant or even good cause to search you), you can undergo a lot of hassle.
- 14y ago
- alttag 14y agoI've done some work with a local (university) police force that used bait bikes. They'd attach a GPS device, secure it with a poor lock, and wait a couple of days. I went with them once to track down where the stolen bike was parked. Every once in a while they'd land on a ring selling all kinds of stuff on Ebay, but that was less common. Part of their trouble was, being an underfunded public agency, their bike wasn't of the expensive sort, so I got the impression they were seeing diminishing returns over time as the bike became less desirable. They did this with laptops too, although their "bait" laptop no longer worked, and was really old. I could never get anyone to steal it. I don't know what happened when the case(s) were turned over to the D.A. When I was in Japan, the bikes-stealing dynamic was a bit different: the most common place to find your bike was at the nearest train station. The typical thief seemed to be running late for the train, and would borrow whatever was available.
- saraid216 14y ago> When I was in Japan, the bikes-stealing dynamic was a bit different: the most common place to find your bike was at the nearest train station. The typical thief seemed to be running late for the train, and would borrow whatever was available. I feel terrible for finding this side-splittingly hilarious.
- evoxed 14y agoIt actually happens quite a bit... I was just the slightest bit startled when even my fiancée suggested it like it was nothing. "It's better than being late, they'll get it back..."
- Blara 14y agoThere are GPS modules you can attach to your bike, if nothing else it could at least get the police interested if you say "My bike was stolen, it has a GPS and right now it is here"
- crntaylor 14y agoI'm not so sure. A friend once had a laptop stolen with the Prey anti-theft software [1] installed, which transmits the location, a screencap and a webcam photo of whoever is using your laptop once every ten minutes. He still couldn't get the police interested. [1] http://preyproject.com/ http://preyproject.com/
- mapster 14y agoAgreed. Further, take the PD out of the equation. There needs to be a grassroots effort. Each new bike purchase should be in tied to register and be active in an online community to police the used bike market and put the swueeze on organized bike thieves.