Bicycle Advice

Theft of pedal cycles is a common crime throughout the UK with the obvious peaks and troughs occuring in Summer and Winter months , the current economic trend has seen an increase in the use of pedal cycles as individuals try to reduce transport and parking costs. Ironically January 2010 saw an all time low in the number of pedal cycles stolen from the City center and Barton street neighbourhood area's but from this point on each month has seen a steady increase in the thefts with five times the January total being stolen in May 2010.

Immediate action was taken and a police operation was put in place to tackle this issue, reviews of theft reports showed a high number of the stolen pedal cycles were left insecure, others had poor quality locks or they were incorrectly fitted with owners returning to find a chained wheel remaining where they had left their cycle. Police CCTV was used to its best ability and although offenders were identified and arrested one thing that stood out was the sheer speed that the offenders had in stealing the cycles; infact they were often quicker at stealing them than the legitimate owners were at unlocking them! Examination of the remains of the locks showed that bolt croppers were used and many of the locks were low grade making them easy to cut off.

Obviously this was not the case for every bike theft, a variety of tools and sheer determination by the offenders inevitably means even decent locks can be breached if they have the time to tackle them. That time also gives the police time to respond and gain close up cctv recordings which in turn have resulted in some arrests and prosecutions.

Police operations increased patrols in hotspot areas, targetted offenders and increased street checks on pedal cycles. During this process we realised that owners are able to tell us the bike make, model, colour, number of gears and cost of their bike; but serial/frame numbers were rarely provided. On mass produced bikes these numbers are essential.

In essence Police have stepped up the game on cycle theft investigations utilising forensics/cctv and stop and search powers and more but then we often hit a wall , unable to prove beyond reasonable doubt that the bikes we are checking are actually stolen ones. The Bike Register is the answer to this problem and its free; police have access to this register and can complete on the street checks in seconds. Please help us to help you!