What Happens to Stolen Bicycles?

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.<p>- 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.<p>- 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)<p>- 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.<p>(pretty much all of these are stolen from the book When Brute Force Fails).

When I was a kid (GET OFF MY LAWN!!!)<p>We used to be able to register our bikes with the police department. They'd stamp a registration number onto the frame of the bike using lettered taps and a hammer. The only way to take off the registration is to either file it down or cover it over, in either case a clear indication the bike is stolen.<p>I got a bike stolen 3 times. Twice I got one back when the police found it (once the bike had upgrades too. Better front fork, better grips and 2nd rider peddels had been added)<p>Anyway, I'm sure someone will cite "budget cuts" but I certainly wish they still registered bikes. It seems like in a city like SF there are enough cyclists, revenues from registering the bikes could pay for a few bike police.

It makes sense that large-scale operations are common in locations with a big bike scene. These will likely require a distribution network, so fighting bike theft might benefit from focusing on infiltrating those networks.<p>I had a friend who bought a bike lock that was insured against any thefts (whether they were quick with the insurance, I don't know). When he went to register it, he saw that there were two exceptions, one of which was the city in which he lived: Eugene Oregon, a town with tens of thousands of students. After asking around, he was told bike thieves there loaded entire bike racks onto trucks in a couple minutes, then removed each lock at their leisure in a storage facility.<p>I find it hard to imagine that they sold them off individually: it's too suspicious to have a few people selling hundreds of bikes. Likewise, delegating to underlings to sell the bikes also seems too risky, as several people now know about the enterprise. I suppose they sell wholesale to used bike shops in other towns who are in the know.<p>The solution in this case would seem to be turning criminals into witnesses, a la drug enforcement. Enforcement on an individual-basis wouldn't work: mere possession of a single stolen bicycle is unlikely to prove criminality. I doubt penalizing individuals for owning a bike (as with counterfeit money) would work either: if I go to a used bike shop to buy a bike, they're not going to give me the "stolen discount" - the shop is going to mark it up to the same price as legitimate used bikes.

There is a bike seller in Manhattan who uses an interesting system in reselling his (more than likely) stolen bikes.<p>Once a buyer contacts him via craigslist, he finds out the persons general vicinity, brings the bike to the area and locks it up with a combo lock based chain. He will give you the address of the bike, and if you like it, can make the purchase online and you receive the combination. If you don't want it, he can pick it up who knows when - or leave it for someone else to check out. If the bike gets stolen, he hasn't lost anything on his bottom line and at no point is he in physical communication with the actual purchaser.

I think a useful tactic to curb loss of expensive bikes would be to legally target the people who buy them, these are the people that cause the market to exist and perpetuate the situation. My guess is that most of these people are not crooks, i.e. they are just young people who want to but can't afford a nice bike and they know exactly what they are buying. I don't understand anything about bikes so can't give an example there, but if a person would approach me to sell, say, a 2010 Prius for $5K, I just <i>know</i> that is a stolen car. If knowingly buying a stolen car carries even a small legal charge, most people wouldn't do it.<p>Tangentially, and pardon my ignorance, I'm not a biker: I can't understand people who shell out <i>thousands</i> of dollars for a bike, are these so much better than a $500 one?

I live in the Netherlands, and bikes here are omnipresent. They also get stolen. A lot. Which is why most bikes you see in cities tend to be not too great looking.<p>About 10 years ago in the city of Utrecht the bike stealing was a really big problem. Here also the stealing of bikes is really hard to get caught with. The police used decoy bikes to catch thieves trying to steal those, but also this only catches small parts of them.<p>Ultimately this has been solved by also changing the way people handle this. If your bike got stolen, you just went out into the city, found a junkie, and often he had a bike for sale. If not he would have one 10 minutes later.<p>The police changed their approach to this, and started cracking down hard on the selling of bikes on the street. Not only the people selling them, but also the people <i>buying</i> the bike. Even going so far as police officers going undercover and trying to get people to buy bikes.<p>Within months the stealing of bikes dropped to near zero.

<i>If Goldman Sachs didn’t have more profitable market inefficencies to exploit, they might be out there arbitraging stolen bikes.</i><p>Funny how no explanation is needed for this line. Goldman Sachs (and hence, Wall Street) is now the poster child for risk-free crime.

I've always wanted to buy a cheap bike and create a quick release bolt on the rear wheel that unspools as the wheel turns. I figure the culprit could get 3 or 4 revolutions before the back wheel falls off. Or maybe attach a length of wire to the front brake cable that wraps around the rear axel. Suddenly the wire snaps tight and yanks the front brakes. I figure it would make a good youtube series. My main fear is being stabbed to death by an angry bike thief...

The "risk" as described here seems to account for only single incidences of bicycle theft. Seems like the more professional the bike thief, the larger the inventory of stolen bikes, thus the greater the penalty for being caught. Given that the value of stolen bikes on the market is relatively low, this might explain why there is no bike thief kingpin: at a certain point the risk exceeds the reward.<p>As an aside: I am surprised that the risk to kidnappers is considered higher than the risk to bank robbers. Can anyone explain this?

I've heard rumors that lots of stolen bikes are exported on container ships leaving the US. The argument is that the shipping is basically free, since most ships are carrying large deliveries to the US and are empty on the return trip.<p>Does anyone know if this is fact or fiction?

You are retro feeding the system when you buy an stolen item, even in good faith not knowing it has been stolen. A possible way out is to check the serial number of the frame. Most modern bikes have a serial number engraved in the bottom bracket. Before buying a second hand bike, check the serial number online, just Google it. See if the previous (sad) owner had posted a notice on the incident somewhere: blog, dedicated site to stolen bikes[1] etc. If you happen to find confirmation, you know what to do.<p>[1] <a href="http://www.bicicletasroubadas.com.br" rel="nofollow">http://www.bicicletasroubadas.com.br</a> (Portuguese)

I dont know if its common in the anywhere else but in my town here in germany the stealing of bike-PARTS has become very popular. I guess the owners of high-value bikes use better locks, that are actually hard to break ( like those: <a href="http://ebay.muskelkater-sport.de/fahrrad/schloesser/bordo-granit-xplus-maximum-level15-2.jpg" rel="nofollow">http://ebay.muskelkater-sport.de/fahrrad/schloesser/bordo-gr...</a> ). But for Parts the risk is even lower and a good break or light system can yield a few bucks.<p>I personally use a cheap ( 50€ ) used bike as a daily driver, in combination with a 30€ lock, there will mostly be an easier/better target for the thief and if it ever gets stolen, its just 50 (80) bucks and not 1000€.

<i>&#62; In 1968, Chicago economist Gary Becker introduced the notion that criminal behavior could be modeled using conventional economic theories.</i><p>We need to start examining the motivations for cracking in the same way. Locks in the real world are far from foolproof, and work as much or more because of societal expectations and economics than they do because of their embodied technology.<p>What most companies do with DRM ignores reality in two important ways:<p><pre><code> 1) Your own technological capability and manpower can be overwhelmed by the tech and manpower available to the Internet as a whole. 2) If you have something of significant monetary or prestige value, you are not going to secure it with a single supremely clever lock. </code></pre> Real world security consists of a defense in depth. Real locks and safes aren't burglar-proof. Instead, they are rated to delay thieves for a certain length of time. Their purpose is to <i>increase the risk of the transaction</i> thereby making it <i>uneconomical</i>.<p>Crackers will always win if the payoff is worth the effort.<p>Presently, any software downloaded to a user's machine can be cracked. Therefore, do not try to prevent that -- it's a losing battle. Refuse the things that you can economically refuse. (Server-side functionality, service and support, participation online.)<p>Detection is 1000X as powerful, <i>if the consequences are separated in time</i> from the actual detection. If you give the game away immediately, you are providing your opponent data. If the consequences are delayed by 3 days or even several months, the economics of cracking become like the economics of fixing intermittent bugs and Heisenbugs.<p>Security needs to focus on <i>economic leverage</i>. Since your opponents have more time and capability than you, you need to ensure that they are spending 1000X more resources to combat your actions. Instead of needing to catch them every time, or your game is lost, make them need to catch you every time, or their game is lost. (The robber needs to get away with the heist every time, while the police only need to catch him once. However, the guerrilla fighters only need to get away with a raid occasionally, while the occupiers need to catch them every time. Yet in both situations, the 1st party has far fewer resources. Something to think about.)

A woman at work had her bike stolen in SF (off the front of a bus if you can believe that) and decided to go to every flea-market she could find in Oakland that weekend. When she found the bike she just took it and dared the guy selling it to do something about it. She just rode away. :)

My experience has been most bike thieves are kids. It's a training in a way for car thieves. They chop the bikes up, and paint them, then ride or sell them. bikes are a valuable commodity in bad neighborhoods cuz lots of people can't afford cars and public transportation might not take them where they need to go.

A suitably sociopathic individual could probably have a beneficial effect on the bike theft rates in a city by just going around to the places where stolen bikes are sold and beating the sellers mostly to death with a baseball bat. That'd be an intriguing experiment for an economist with the right sort of anti-social personality disorder (which is all of them, so I feel silly making the distinction).

Does anyone actually use priceonomics.com? I'm sorry, but I don't find the service useful at all. They come up with viral blog posts all the time, but the service is not actually something that I would use.

If the price of bikes hadn't gone through the roof within the last 20 years there wouldn't be so much incentive to steal them. As it is you can hardly buy a new bike for less than $800 at most shops.<p>Even if I could attach a weatherproofed Macbook to a pole with a U-lock, it would still be really unwise to do so. This is a pitiful commentary on our society and law enforcement

The best workaround I know of for bike commuting is bike share programs. (US examples: "Nice Ride" in Minneapolis or "Capital Bikeshare" in DC). In these examples, the bikes are large, relatively unattractive, limited functionality (3 speeds), have distinctive designs, and these things to me I'm hoping remove the incentive to steal the bike.

It would help if every purchaser of a bicycle checked the frame serial number against various online stolen bike databases. I'm not sure how fragmented the bike registration industry is.

The current police policy is to not investigate thefts under some threshold, say $2000. So you can steal bikes all day long and never get caught. A better policy would be to investigate thefts of value X with probability X / $4000. It's roughly the same total work, but doesn't create a safe haven for low-value thieves.

This is an area where a disruptive technology is due. Imagine if even 10% of bikes had technology that wirelessly sends out GPS coordinates or can identify the owner via an embedded RFID tag. Suddenly stealing bikes is not nearly as risk free and the incentive to participate is greatly reduced.

I love priceonomics, every time I read one of their articles I learn something new (for example I didn't realize you could exchange a stolen bike for sex). Approaching this as an economics problem seems like a good approach. I think if bike manufacturers built in ways to uniquely identify bikes, and those idents were economically infeasible to remove, then you could do a bitcoin style distributed database of the current 'real' owner of a bike, then the cops could periodically go into 7th and Market or where ever, collect all the stolen bikes and tell their owners they are recovered. If you remove 1/2 the bad dealers inventory every month its going to cut into their profits, and if they stop buying stolen bikes in bulk you make it harder to flip them etc etc.

Cities should levy a bike tax and use it to fund some snipers that shoot assholes who steal bikes.

With crimes which are lightly prosecuted, I wonder if having infrequent but very high severity punishment works comparably to having consistent but moderate punishment.<p>In China, they do "Strike Hard" campaigns, where crimes which might normally be gross misdemeanor level (shoplifting, assault) are punished far more severely (sometimes by execution).<p>This might be a way to raise the expected cost of committing the crime, while not raising the cost of anti-crime enforcement that much.

Around where I live there's definitely another factor to consider: Opportunity theft. A lot of bikes get stolen simply because it's very easy to do so, especially downtown. On the weekends when there are lots of drunk people around, a _LOT_ of bikes get stolen simply because people are too lazy to walk or they just find it funny to steal a bike. These bikes sure as hell don't end up at some kind of black market, instead they are simply left at some place and somebody else picks them up. It's like a never-ending cycle of bike theft. Also it doesn't help that most bike locks are ridiculously easy to break.<p>Another thing that I've noticed (I'm an avid freeride-biker) is that there are actually gangs that target high-end bikes. They have spies at known bike-trails and follow people home. If they see an expensive bike they break into cellars, garages and sometimes even people's apartments just to steal a bike. The bikes are then taken apart and most components are sold right away (a second hand fork in good shape can still go for $1000+ in some cases) and the frame itself is shipped abroad and sold separately. I'm actually very paranoid because it's happened to two friends already... :/

One of the links hidden away in the article is actually quite amusing: <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/13/opinion/bike-thief.html?_r=1" rel="nofollow">http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/13/opinion/bike-thief.html?_r...</a> It is a video if a guy stealing a bike a few times with saw/crowbar etc. (Except it's actually a hidden camera setup and it's his bike. Spoiler alert: Many people walk by, noone cares)

The one thing I would've liked to see was the age breakdown of the offenders. I remember vividly in junior high there was a kid who stole BMX bikes, soldered off the serial number and then re-sold them for around $300 a piece. He got to be like a professional car thief in that he would take requests if someone wanted something specific.<p>It was a very lucrative side business for a 12 year old kid.

I'm sure a significant portion especially in the high end can be explained by rational actors with pretty low prospects. But I'm suspicious that there isn't a lot more of the less rational going on. The hoarder mentioned in the article may not be an outlier and bike theft is also sort of a low stakes learning ground.<p>In anything approaching an urban center I see a lot of abandoned bikes (locked and slowly vultured.) They are generally attributed to lazy owners, but a portion may be decaying inventories of hoarders, joy riders and/or thrill seekers.<p>I'm reminded of inventories of locks on urban fences. Obviously the collections of not so rational (but social or antisocial) actors.<p>I think a good urban experiment would be a collection system that pays ~$5 a bike (and gives immunity once you arrive) and charges ~$7.50 to a verifiable owner before selling back into the free market of "used" bikes. A little cross between a repo-man and the can man, to keep the things a little tighter and make it more likely lessons are learnt on the cheap.

A few months ago I saw a tweaked-out guy at 6th &#38; Howard in San Francisco (just outside the Techshop) literally trying to saw-off a U-lock in broad daylight. A bunch of other homeless guys were lazily watching with amusement.<p>I really would love to build a pepperspray-bomb-in-a-U-lock, if only I could do so without being instantly sued by a litigious thief.

&#62; He had to learn a life lesson a little earlier than I had liked - that there are some people in the world who are just plain mean.<p>We live in a complex world full of complex people with countless motivations. It's always tempting to dismiss someone as "just plain mean", but it's rarely accurate.<p>I realize this is somewhat off-topic. Just stood out to me.

I love these Freakenomic-y types of articles. Really makes you think about very every day occurrences in different ways.<p>I thought maybe I could add some game theory into the mix, just for the sake of it. For example...<p>Following an economic perspective it could be viewed, given the suggestions made in the article, that for your average bike on the street it is almost impossible to protect against theft using a lock or by any other "practical" means. Therefore (bare with me) when you park your bike on the street you are in a sense "competing" with other cyclist in presenting the worst return for the criminal. Locks, paint jobs, parking locations etc. are just ways of saying to the thief "Hey, this is going to be difficult. Why not have a go at stealing that shiny looking bike next to mine." You are not solely competing against the criminals but your fellow cyclists!

I wasn't surprised by the drugs part, but learning that stolen bikes are considered street currency actually makes me more bullish on Bitcoin. It's still a terrible idea, but it's got to be more convenient than using bikes as currency.<p>I wonder what would happen if the criminal world started experiencing hyperdeflation?

Some bikes are REALLY expensive. Look at the lengths this guy goes to recover his:<p><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=poBajFv-Dyk" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=poBajFv-Dyk</a><p>Don't mess with bikers. Something that's your mode of transit everywhere starts to mean more than just the $ value.

A Dutch friend once told me that bike theft in Holland was pretty ripe, but it was more of a social norm; people wouldn't feel bad about stealing a rubbish bike and then leaving it somewhere for someone else to steal.. the bikes would almost become communal bikes.

How about a bike with a combo lock built into its gears so that all the gears will only spin if the correct combo is given. The built-in combo lock can also be rigged to detonate some wired-in explosive if someone attempts to forcefully remove it.

What kind of insurance options exist in the US for bikes?<p>Over here your basic home insurance covers the bike theft minus a deductible (often something like 200e). Then you can get a separate bike insurance for 25e/year which will cover the deductible and also register the bikes serial number in a database and they (claim to) do some cooperation with the police and border officials to flag stolen bike serial numbers and return stolen bikes to owners. Your bike also gets a special sticker which probably repels bike thieves. Many retailers automatically preregister bikes with this service and include 3 months of free insurance, and include ads for the full service...

When I was a college student, I had my bikes stolen so often that I did two things: First, I started buying hot bikes cheap because, hey, legal bikes were expensive.<p>Second, I wrapped the frame of one bike in masking tape and smeared grease and paint on it. I kept that one for years; not even the local junkies wanted it. I guess they didn't notice my servicable Campy brakes and shifters, or didn't see the value in them.<p>I'm not sure the rational-actor theory applies to bike theft.<p>UNLESS it's the bike dealers behind the theft rings doing it to create demand, and they're just crushing the old stuff. Bwahahahahahaha. There's a batman movie in that villain theory.

And of course: the stolen goods are also your means of escape; an added advantage.

While we're at it, bike lock advice from one of cycling's old grey beards, Sheldon Brown: <a href="http://www.sheldonbrown.com/lock-strategy.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.sheldonbrown.com/lock-strategy.html</a>

Here in the Netherlands (with an average of 2 bikes per inhabitant) there is another big class of bicycle thieves: those whose bike just got stolen, and don't want to buy a new one (yet again)...

I think there is a decent underground operation of used bikes: I recently bought a bike off a used car bike shop in mountain view ( off of shoreline ). You walked in and there were 500 bikes ( in all shapes and sizes ) available. From vintage to kids to racing. You name it. I always wondered where they got their bikes from. Most bike owners dont report, keep track of the bike ids. And police dont have incentives to track them. If the margins weren't there, people wont steal them.

One of the things I noticed when I was in Copenhagen for a week earlier this year was that people don't lock up their bikes as much. I saw lots of people leaving bikes unlocked when going into coffee shops, etc. when in the UK they'd be locking 'em up.<p>There were many bikes that were locked - but they looked more like "commuter bikes" near the metro and office buildings. Folk using them to get around during the day often seemed to leave them unlocked.

What about bike parts? Bike seats, wheels, etc get stolen all the time. Are they just scrapping these parts out for 5 to 10 cents on the dollar as well?

My bike is a nice 10 speed I bought 35 years ago. It still works fine, is an excellent bike, and is worth maybe $25.<p>I doubt it's worth stealing.

This seemed timely, so I thought I'd share: an electric bike company, OHM Cycles (<a href="http://ohmcycles.com" rel="nofollow">http://ohmcycles.com</a>) is running a free contest to win a really high-end bike lock worth $200. You can enter here: <a href="http://www.facebook.com/ohmcycles/app_143103275748075" rel="nofollow">http://www.facebook.com/ohmcycles/app_143103275748075</a>

Crazy idea time: since the problem with the demand end is the difficulty of telling the difference between stolen property and legitimate secondhand sales, what would happen if all sales of secondhand bikes were banned? Would the reduction in theft be worth the loss of end-of-life revenue plus slight erosion of liberty? Not a rhetorical question, I don't know the answer.

I wonder if the large number of stolen bikes on the market basically depresses local prices to the extent that even if you have to buy a new bike you don't lose that much vs a world with minimal bike theft. The Japanese market might be relevant, as 10-15 years ago there was seemingly little bike theft and now it's rampant in certain areas.

In NYC most stolen bikes are resold to delis and pizza shops for their delivery guys. Ever wonder why the minimum wage delivery guy is riding a $800 cannondale? They usually wrap the frame in duct tape so you don't recognize it. Get flat or a Bent rim? Just buy a new one from your local crackhead for $25 and you are on your way.

If I had more time I do believe I'd enjoy getting a fairly fancy bicycle, having a friend park it up, lock it with a fairly crap lock, and then just chill out at a nearby cafe watching it, waiting for some piece of shit to steal it, and then following them and seeing where they go with it/beating the everliving shit out of them.

In Berkeley, Karim Cycle is a "used bike" shop infamous for fencing stolen bikes. Everyone knows it, but proving it is too much work for the police. The Yelp reviews are funny but disheartening: <a href="http://www.yelp.com/biz/karim-cycle-berkeley-3" rel="nofollow">http://www.yelp.com/biz/karim-cycle-berkeley-3</a>

I know of someone who would steal bikes just to get back home from the bar. He was too cheap for a taxi. He had a huge stash of them in his basement because he didn't know what to do with them. So when he had parties at his house he started giving them to people so they could get home.

Slightly off topic anecdote:<p>A colleague of mine has his bike stolen from Ham House in Richmond, but fortunately the police quickly identifed the thief from CCTV footage.<p>It was a particularly hot day, and they could clearly see where the thief had his name tattooed on his back.

Google cache: <a href="http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:blog.priceonomics.com%2Fpost%2F30393216796%2Fwhat-happens-to-stolen-bicycles" rel="nofollow">http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:blog.pr...</a>

What happens to stolen bicycles? Seriously, what happens to them? This article doesn't begin to address the question within the first paragraph, and if they can't format their article properly I can't justify spending time reading it.

"Just because the risk of a crime is zero, that doesn’t mean that a criminal will engage in that crime. If that were the case, thieves would go about stealing dandelions and day-old newspapers"<p>Now, that's classic.

My guess is that bikes will get GPS devices put in them eventually. Then people will be able to track their routes etc. Maybe when that happens, people will be able to track their stolen bikes.

If expensive bikes wouldn't work for the thief or their client, they would stop. RFID tag embedded in the frame, locking the headset? Just have to make it hard enough to not be worth it.

"Open Letter to the Guy Who Stole My Bike Wheel" <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m68-oWBh9Ow" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m68-oWBh9Ow</a>

So the penalty is near zero if you're caught, this says. Does that also go for thefts of other items of comparable price, like TVs? If not, why the difference?

We have the same problem in the major cities of Brazil. I live in Curitiba and i lost 9 bikes stolen 'till now.<p>Jhansen - www.ciclismo.esp.br

"If Goldman Sachs didn’t have more profitable market inefficencies to exploit, they might be out there arbitraging stolen bikes."<p>Ouch! LOL

Even though I locked it, my bicycle also was stolen in Barcelona in 15 minutes in middle of city.

my friends bike being stolen: caught on tape in NYC. Lets find this guy!!! <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1E1ck8LDlE&#38;feature=plcp" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1E1ck8LDlE&#38;feature=plcp</a>

This is why I don't want to buy a second-hand bike.