Some git put a lock on my bike

[TheAnimus]

Parked on a public Sheffield stand some git put a cable lock right around the top bar of my frame, and chained a crappy mountain bike to my hybrid.

According to one of the security guards in my building (on waiting list for a space in this one....) its apparently a way of getting people to leave their bike there over night, the city of london is empty after midnight especially on weekends and my two new york kyrptonite locks would be angle grinded off.

City of London police were about as useful as one would expect in saying to cut it off and I probably wouldn't be done for criminal damage.

But luckily the building's engineering team were excellent and we had it off in about 30 seconds with a good pair of bolt cutters and some elbow grease. Apparently they have a cordless angle grinder in case they use a proper lock next time.

However the person who put the chain lock on my bike, put it between the frame and my gearing cable, the chain came of three times on my way home tonight.... it has NEVER come off before in the 1000k+ I've done on this new bike. So now I need to re-adjust it all.

The thing that gets me is that people buy these bikes second hand. The identification numbers will have to be ground off as its clearly registered to me on the database, yet someone would still buy it. I think these are the guys that we need to look at targeting. I'm half tempted to write to my MP proposing we make it illegal to buy or sell a bicycle that has warn off identification marks. It would be very easy to stop the trade in stolen bikes and therefore make it a very un-economic crime.

[Sputnik]

I'm glad you got it off and got your bike home. Sad that people cannot leave other peoples belongings alone.

[razer121]

The yobs of today hey? There was a thing i watched on the www which had a dude setup who kept stealing bikes, maybe you should consider this? they ended up paint balling the thief untill the police came! was a very good to watch the boy cry

[Andeh13]

Sorry, couldn't help but laugh at that! Yobs helping make the world a little bit more secure....one bike lock at a time!

[subucni]

Sorry to hear that mate, i like the idea about buying bikes with the ID ground off, but i don't see how much difference it'd make. The thiefs would just sell them as is, and not sure how many buyers would put the effort into bothering to contact the police to find out if the bike was stolen before buying it. And if people got caught with a bike after buying it that had been stolen, regardless of whether they knew it was or not they'd just use the plausible deniability of not knowing.

They'd have to make it a lot more servere on absolutely anyone caught with one, and likewise they'd then have to make it ridiculously easy to check if a bike is stolen, something like a simple website, type the frame number into a search box, hit enter, and it comes back with the status of the bike, reported stolen or not. Or something along those lines.

[Sputnik]

I'm not sure about yobs, I'd say they are just professional bike thieves more like.

[santa claus]

Parked on a public Sheffield stand ........

I'm absolutely 100% with you on this. Nothing grinds my gears (pun intended) like crummy, bike thieves. I knew about this locking technique but you have to be careful another cyclist hasn't made a genuine mistake whilst locking up in a hurry. I think your instinct was right though and I'm glad you were able to get away.

Please do write to your MP. Write to Boris too. Cycling is very in vogue at the moment and the authorities seem more interested in helping cyclists for a change.

Do you think though that thieves will just dismantle bikes in situ if a ground off frame number becomes a problem for them? Wheels, gears and saddles can add up to a pretty penny. We need some way of making the whole bike theft idea a no-no. Microdotting? TNT loaded frames? Electric shock? Something horrible involving their testicles would be good.

[oolon]

Isn't it thief to depribe someone of there property? Even though the bike has not moved you are still not able to use it so it is thief. Its kind of like illegal wheel clamping.

Of course I am sure Saracen will correct me.

[format]

Isn't it thief to depribe someone of there property? Even though the bike has not moved you are still not able to use it so it is thief. Its kind of like illegal wheel clamping.

Of course I am sure Saracen will correct me.

But TheAnimus was making the point that it seems to be a new popular tactic - to chain a good, expensive bike up to an old crapper bike, and so encourage the person to leave it there overnight. When it's later (and quieter) the alleged thief will return with an angle grinder and take the original lock off, and steal the bike.

[Whiternoise]

My housemate forgot his bike lock keys at university once, he's an engineer - just went to the undergraduate labs and borrowed a bolt cutter, walked outside and chopped off the lock - job done. No one batted an eyelid. And that's a lot faster than waiting overnight if you were trying to steal a bike!

It would be very hard for police to enforce stolen bike sales with no ID numbers - they'd either be stripped for parts or just sold anyway. People get conned into buying stolen goods all the time - just look at the mobile phone trade and the police haven't really been able to crack down on that.

What I'd do is get a GPS transmitter fitted inside the frame that's hooked up to a vibration based charger - like those torches that you have to toss off to light up (and no, not those torches). It only needs to ping its location every 15 minutes or so.

Or just paint it pink? I guarantee no one will nick a pink bike.

[Flibb]

Heres a link to whats treated as the deffinitive guide to bike locks
http://www.lfgss.com/thread17938.html

The problem is that the tend to weigh a ton.

[kalniel]

Do you think though that thieves will just dismantle bikes in situ if a ground off frame number becomes a problem for them? Wheels, gears and saddles can add up to a pretty penny. We need some way of making the whole bike theft idea a no-no. Microdotting? TNT loaded frames? Electric shock? Something horrible involving their testicles would be good.

It shouldn't be too hard to etch the various parts with the same code. Would make second hand part selling a bit trickier, but that might have an effect in itself.

Heres a link to whats treated as the deffinitive guide to bike locks
http://www.lfgss.com/thread17938.html

The problem is that the tend to weigh a ton.

A friend had one of these heavy duty type locks, they smashed it off with multiple applications of liquid nitrogen and a large hammer. Worse was that the manufacturer refused to pay out for the 'guarantee' because she was only left with one part of the lock.

[chrestomanci]

It shouldn't be too hard to etch the various parts with the same code. Would make second hand part selling a bit trickier, but that might have an effect in itself.

The problem with that is that it won't make a lot of difference unless people pay attention to seral numbers.

I would like to see a law that requires all manufatuers and importers of anything expensive with a serial number to keep an owners database which the owners can later update with a stolen status. The DB should include the serial numbers of the more expensive component parts as well. To go with that there would need to be a law that requires all online second hand sales to include the seral number, which would then be checked against the manufactuer's DB.

So for example, suppose I want to sell my phone on eBay, The listing form would include a box for the IMEI number, and the law would require me to fill it in. eBay's computer would then check with Nokia's DB, and if it comes back stolen or unknown eBay will lock my account and report me to the police. When I sell the phone the buyer should be requried to check the IMEI of the phone they recieve with the listing, and if they don't match would need to report the sale ASAP. If they don't check and it is later discoverd that the numbers don't match then that buyer would be guilty of facilitating theft.

Also if someone connects a stolen iPod or suchlike to a computer to download more music, then the PC software should check the serial number against the stolen DB, and lock it if it is stolen.

[BobF64]

And the problem, as always, is the annoyance that "false positives" cause.

Only takes a mistyped digit in the IMEI or other serial number and you flag someone thats done nothing wrong.

But because "the system" says they have, they have one hell of a job proving its nothing to do with them.

Red tape, gotta love it.

[virokka]

sorry i dont mean to laugh but it sounds funny - but then it sounds like quite a convoluted / clever scheme

[chrestomanci]

sorry i dont mean to laugh but it sounds funny - but then it sounds like quite a convoluted / clever scheme

It would not be that complex. If you buy so much as a toaster it comes with a registration card that has the product's serial number pre-printed on it, and if you fill in and send back then your details go into a database at the manufacturer. At the moment all that DB is used for is junk mail, it should not be hard for the manufacturers to add a public interface so that owners can update status, and second hand buyers can check status.

At the moment databases of serial numbers for stolen items exist, but only for large scale thefts. If someone hijacks a lorry load of toasters, and sells them on at car boot sales, the the police will have a record of the serial numbers, and use that record to nail the thief if they catch them. What I am suggesting is that the same sort of system be used to stop small scale individual thefts.

For an example of how it could work, just look at how much mobile phone thefts have been reduced in the past 10 years, now that mobile networks routinely block the IMEI numbers of stolen handsets. These days practically all manufactured articles have serial numbers, so all you need is a way to get people to record those numbers into a database. I think the way to do that is with a law, because that way everyone will act, and crime will be reduced.