
Ban proposed on SF bicycle 'chop shops' - apsec112
http://www.sfexaminer.com/ban-proposed-sf-bicycle-chop-shops/
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franciscop
In Japan they have a really logic system where each bike just has a
registration number. When you buy a bike they can easily change the owner
through some paperwork (there's a lot of paperwork in general in Japan but
it's also really efficient). It's really just the same as a motorbike or car,
just it's not for ID from far away so they are small stickers instead.

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mschuetz
We have/had something similar in my city. It does nothing to prevent bike
theft or getting your stolen bike back.

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8draco8
I'm just assuming here but from what you are saying, your city is an
exception, and rest of the country doesn't have that law so I can come to your
city from some country side with my bike and lack of registration number on my
bike wouldn't be surprise to any one. It would work only if it would be
mandatory that every bike in the country have to have registered owner (like
cars and motorbikes) so you would never expect buying a bike without
registration papers and police could easily check if bike is registered for
you or not.

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mschuetz
It's a small european country and easy to get the bike out of it. Unless
absolutely every country adopts this system, it will remain useless.

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personjerry
Seems like a rather indirect (and thus inefficient?) way of solving the
problem of bike theft

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pizza234
I think the headline is fair; there's no mention anywhere of "solving the
problem of bike theft".

Based on the content, the idea is to give policemen more power (that is,
seizing) to handle chop shops which are literally located in the streets.

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skookumchuck
You could put any longish number on it, then report that number to the police.
Electric engraving tools aren't expensive, around $20.

Legislation could mandate a website that handed out numbers to people who
registered and provided a way to report those numbers as stolen. Registrants
could provide a pic of their bike with the numbers.

This won't eliminate the problem, but it will provide an easy and free method
that people could identify their bikes, report them as stolen, and the police
can identify which bikes are stolen and return them.

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cr1895
I learned the other day that something similar was happening in the US in the
80s with peoples' social security numbers. Someone was asking why a turntable
from the 80s had a big social security number etched into the back;
apparently, the initiative was to use it as an identifier in case the item was
stolen. Now of course it's rather ludicrous to use your SSN in that way but in
principle it seems like a good idea to prove ownership.

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skookumchuck
Engraving the SSN on things was commonplace before the internet and identity
theft became a big thing. Drivers License numbers were used, too.

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kbart
I don't get it. If everyone (including police) knows that these bikes are
stolen, why can't they arrest people that operate such "shops"? Or is property
(bike) theft somewhat legal in US? Also, if somebody stole my bike (or
anything) I would get really pissed off and knowing where to find these guys
(like in this case) I would go get it back myself, possibly with much more
dire consequences than police. Doesn't it happen in SF?

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pmiller2
Because it's really, really hard to actually _prove_ that a stolen bike is
stolen. First, it has to be reported stolen, which does not always happen.
There also has to be some way of positively identifying the bike, like a
serial number, included in the report. Bikes do have serial numbers but not
many people record them.

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ciaranm
There's a UK-based service supported by the police that helps with this sort
of thing: [https://www.bikeregister.com/](https://www.bikeregister.com/)

I haven't had my bike stolen, but friends who have say this helped.

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rodionos
While the proposed legislation appears to make sense, the lack of bike crime
statistics makes it hard to judge if squeezing the distribution part of the
crime chain makes sense. The basics: how many 'chop shops' are there? How many
bikes do they sell? If the numbers are small, it's just another burden on
local police which may have other priorities on their plate, e.g. innercity
crime/drugs.

One of the countries that tracks bike theft as a separate category is
Sweden[0].

    
    
      > In 2015, 66,500 bicycle thefts were processed¹. 
      > Investigation was commenced for 6.5 per cent ... while the majority were dismissed with no investigation. 
    

[0] [https://www.bra.se/bra/bra-in-english/home/crime-and-
statist...](https://www.bra.se/bra/bra-in-english/home/crime-and-
statistics/bicycle-theft.html)

There are 10 mln people living in Sweden, San Francisco has 1 mln. So there
must be like 6K bike thefts annually. How many will be prevented by closing a
few chop shops?

