HELP! My Bike Has Been Stolen!

Well... NOT me... but for example one recent ad from Seattle:
STOLEN Electric Bike - $100 (Near Zoo):
https://seattle.craigslist.org/see/bik/5999614604.html

My blue Ezee Sprint electric bicycle was stolen. I have the serial number for identification. It looks the same as the picture except that there are a number of stickers on the bike -- classic record labels, Sounders, Tottenham Hotspur, FH (Icelandic soccer team). Wald folding wire rack on the back.

REWARD

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Notice anything missing (from this ad, not the bike)?

Seems to me, as use of electric assist takes off in NA, etc, that folks might like a sub-forum on Endless Sphere about stolen bikes? Ebiking folks in Toronto actually have such a separate sub-forum:
https://www.meetup.com/Electric-Bicycles/messages/boards/forum/2592212

... with a "Pinned" message at the top titled "Standardized TERA "My Bike Has Been Stolen" Report" where folks have contributed ideas for adding to any Lost Bike ad. First post:

1) Time and date and location (as near as possible) of theft.
2) Name and model name/number of bike/trike.
3) Date purchased, and from whom (which retailers name, or?).
4) Any and all distinguishing features, marks and blemishes.
5) (Hopefully) One (more better) very recent picture of the bike/trike. (Pic sizes on this forum limited, but original pic can be HUGE/detailed.)

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... and lately I've been suggesting that folks might "customize" with lots of "non-standard" bits and features. To maybe make the bike/trike/etc as "un-saleable" as possible. Make it unique enough that it would require lots of bits to be removed or changed maybe, and aren't really useful with numbers labeled, etc, etc.

Anything you might add to above if YOU had to post a "Lost" bike message?

(Wiki

The Daily Breeze is a print and digital news media company based in Torrance, California. Its coverage area includes the South Bay and Harbor Area cities of Los Angeles County “from LAX to LA Harbor,”...

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Police log: Carson, Torrance crime reports:
http://www.dailybreeze.com/general-news/20170213/police-log-carson-torrance-crime-reports

... includes:

TORRANCE
Theft: 10 p.m. Jan. 30 to noon Jan. 31, 5500 block of Torrance Boulevard. An electric bicycle was reported stolen from a parking garage.

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If I'm right about who is stealing my bikes, they don't look anything like they did when these guys are done with them. But they've stolen literally bikes that aren't rideable. Short of a built in tazer nothing will ever stop these guys. I mean maybe if a 144v bike was built with some sort of "Ball Ground" unit. . . .

Not that it's ebike related, but it is bicycle related: Years back when I was visiting San Francisco for a conference, we were walking around looking for a restaurant when all of the sudden this box van pulls up in front of us quickly and the cargo door is thrown open, revealing a pile of bicycles inside. Probably at least 50 bikes in there. One of the guys yells: "You guys wanna buy a bicycle?" Dumbstruck, we tell them 'no' and the door was slammed shut and off they were again. I'm pretty sure this wasn't a legitimate business.

We had a lot of bikes stolen in my neighborhood and the police was not doing much about it. We, fellow Mtb riders, took it in our own hands. I will not get into details, but with a few bait bikes and some hard recoveries we cleaned the area of bike thieves in 2 riding seasons. Finally, the police lately took some measures too, and now bike thief is pretty rare around here. Still, we can recognize some of them sometimes, either beggars or reconverted in some different illegal activities. Most have moved and probably stealing bikes in other areas of the city. My neighbourhood has a reputation now, that stealing a bike around here is a freaking risky business.

Yes, its one of those current "first world" /City living, problems caused by the popularity of expensive bikes around our urban streets.
there are highly organised "teams" operating between cities simply driving a plain van up to a regular bike parking point and using croppers and cordless grinders to release locks and load a few select expensive bikes into the van for "export" to another city.
A friend even had his expensive road bike removed from a secure underground parking lot this way..together with several others at the same time. Everything was seen on CCTV, but no trace of the van, bikes, or thieves , was ever concluded.
bike theft does not rank high on the priorities of overstretched police resources.
my own experience of an Ebike stolen from inside my home garage by an opportunist passer by, didnt even rate a formal record when reported to local authorities. Infact they were obstructive when i asked to check their stock of recovered stolen bikes.

Curious now watt an ebike smells like:


(They say

The Nelson Mail is Nelson's only daily newspaper. Nelsonmail.co.nz is the newspaper's website, updated throughout the day with the latest news, views, photos, videos and more.

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Two teenagers arrested for car theft in Nelson overnight:
http://www.stuff.co.nz/nelson-mail/...rs-arrested-for-car-theft-in-nelson-overnight

Two teenagers have been arrested after allegedly stealing an electric bicycle and a car in Nelson.

Acting Senior Sergeant Brett Currie said the incident began with police discovering an abandoned car in a ditch near Saxton Field in Stoke on Tuesday night.

"While dog teams were attempting to track the occupants of the abandoned vehicle, a report came in that two men had entered a garage of Kingsford Drive and stole an electric cycle," Currie said.

"It was also discovered that the abandoned car had been stolen earlier in the evening."

Currie said they received reports of two men riding an electric cycle in the Tahunanui area

He said dog teams tracked the pair to a Tahunanui house, where they were found along with the electric bike.

They are aged 16 and 17 years and will appear in the Nelson Youth Court on February 22.

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MadRhino said:

We had a lot of bikes stolen in my neighborhood and the police was not doing much about it. We, fellow Mtb riders, took it in our own hands. I will not get into details, but with a few bait bikes and some hard recoveries we cleaned the area of bike thieves in 2 riding seasons. Finally, the police lately took some measures too, and now bike thief is pretty rare around here. Still, we can recognize some of them sometimes, either beggars or reconverted in some different illegal activities. Most have moved and probably stealing bikes in other areas of the city. My neighbourhood has a reputation now, that stealing a bike around here is a freaking risky business.

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Which neighbourhood are you in? ... not that I'm thinking of stealing _anywhere_ in Mtl ... it's a bit of a ride 4 me

Always check Craigslist daily. My friends ebike was stolen and it ended up on Craigslist. He got the bike back and the thief was arrested. The bike was heavy and useless anyway without the battery pack.

LockH said:

Curious now watt an ebike smells like:
te]

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you may not know, but if you could ask a dog, he would tell you !
A dogs nose is like an Eagles eyes, . They can identify different objects at huge distances, long befor you or i can see them.
To a dog, i suspect every Ebike smells very different.

Yep. It must smell very bad to a dog. I can imagine it does smell about the same as for us a fried motor, controller, and gas leaking battery.

I frequently replace my mounted bike light that gets ripped off while being locked up in an underground secure carpark, the thieves climb a back fence then make their way into the under ground carpark.

I know some here think vibration alarm locks are lame but they appear to be limiting the damage for me.
The last time my $8 ebay bike light got pulled off the vibration alarm went off and you see the theif running like all hell had broken lose, frankly I think its almost worth the $8.. I am thinking of printing webpage the $8 ebay bike light so they get an idea of the value of what they are stealing and sticking it on the wall above the bike.

I keep my ebike locked up behind the red car (Magna) in this video you see him spring out at the end of the video (23secs) running after he yanks my light off. This was the only video I got of him but the building manager had much better video of him entering the carpark since there are at least 10 cameras around the underground car park entries above and below but unfortunately my car/bike is parked at the worst corner of the car park where there is only distant video camera facing the corner from considerable distance. I never bothered to chase it up with police since it was only a $8 light.

Bit of a crime wave has hit Melbourne over the last few years, this happened a few days ago.
http://www.news.com.au/national/victoria/crime/youth-gang-attacks-summersault-festival-crowds-in-melbourne/news-story/52942046cd1123221f747dc1b1e56848

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8N2UxLvHMkw
[youtube]8N2UxLvHMkw[/youtube]

San Francisco, CA

Stolen
2016 Haibike Trekking RC



https://bikeindex.org/bikes/110823

"Last seen 02.18.2017 at 420 Cortland Ave, San Francisco, CA, 94110"

Our bicycle store was broken into at 4:30am in the morning and this and another bike were stolen.

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http://newwheel.net/the-new-wheel-san-francisco

They knew what to pick. Probably the most expansive bike in the shop.
I bet they find it in Oakland with battery dead.

Hidden GPS tag. Track them down.

Appbeza said:

Hidden GPS tag. Track them down.

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Pretty interesting tech. `Been following:
https://endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=71548

(On theory better to catch than to deter...) :wink:

Lock
so you have location of your stolen bike and what you do?
go to location and confront? can turn violent.
Call the police in Toronto? will they rush to location ? doubt it.

like here :

https://endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=71548

Anti-theft device remote controlled:
[youtube]4bN76TvJspY[/youtube]

:wink:

Those pranks on bike thieves are hilarious. Then, after the funny purpose, there is a real solution in bait bikes.

A few bait bikes carefully selected and placed strategically, can solve bike theft in about 6 weeks. It's been done here with success. Many police dept are now using bait bikes and bait cars.

MadRhino said:

bait

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If it was that simple to stop auto and bike theft every place would do that. Actually, you can see that it mostly affects thieves who take this stuff on a whim, so you still have a problem with criminals who plan out the theft. And for a big city, achieving more than a small deterrent effect would be a logistical and funding nightmare as you'd have to have bait literally everywhere.

Well, it is not about doing it like a joke, with an unlocked bait in a tempting spot. It has to be done with the models that are stolen the most, in places that are common and locked as most are. The purpose is not to bait opportunity theft, but to use the statistics to place the right bait at the right place. And it does work, after a few are catched. What we soon found out here: Over 90% of bike theft in a neighbourhood is the fact of only a few that are repeating the same pattern.

Well DARN. Now MY bike (MOBO brand recumbent cruiser trike) HAS been stolen (from east Toronto "Scarborough" in Ontario, Canada. Did up a poster:

Oh NO! for realz?!?!

I'm hoping the unscrupulous culprit is brought to justice, or at least you find your rig!
Was it locked or alarm equipped? No trackers?

^^ Hehe... This is the THIRD time this trike has been taken. The first time (first one... I've bought two identical), this trike was already badly battered (experiments in high speed rollovers...) and the frame had already been broken where I had paid anyway for a warranty/guarantee included in the purchase price, so the US supplier had already refunded my money, so the trike was "free" for me any way). This second one had been stolen once before, but I has posted a pic on local "social media"/FacePlant site and within hours somebuddy piped up "I've seen that!" w/a name and address for the perp. So I went there and stole it back. (His friends explained that doctors had labeled the kid as "autistic", so didn't feel like getting police involved...) This last time had just paid a local bike shop $500+ to repair the thing (parts of frame from Canadian supplier in British Columbia. Shipping very "spendy"). This last theft... still had not installed a GPS Tracker:
https://endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=71548 [Grumble Grumble]

STILL can't believe some kids might steal a wheelchair (w/cane) for a "joy ride". I blame lousy parenting. [Sigh]