
A Seattle vigilante who beats the police to bike thieves - pkaeding
http://www.outsideonline.com/2108066/emerald-citys-velo-thieves-have-problem-bike-batman
======
belovedeagle
For those not in the Seattle area, it may be useful to understand that Seattle
PD is in the middle of a months- or years- long work slowdown - a police
strike, when you do away with euphemisms - in response to federal oversight of
the department. They will barely respond to most crimes, so rising vigilantism
is hardly surprising.

~~~
jonchang
Ha ha, oh wow:

"We found that SPD has engaged in a pattern or practice of excessive force
that violates the Constitution and federal law. Our investigation further
raised serious concerns that some SPD policies and practices, particularly
those related to pedestrian encounters, could result in discriminatory
policing."

[https://www.justice.gov/crt/investigation-
documents](https://www.justice.gov/crt/investigation-documents)

~~~
35bge57dtjku
How old is that? There's supposed to be some new head honcho that will fix
things.

~~~
eyelidlessness
There's always some new head honcho that'll fix things. The FOP won't have
anything to do with fixing things. They're above the law.

------
Zigurd
Every college town has at least one theft ring that operates this way. If you
see a beat up truck full of bikes on the highway, it's one of these guys
moving bikes from where he stole them to where he is selling them.

Finding this activity is as easy as falling off a log. If you want to try this
for yourself, you are literally minutes away from meeting a bike thief. He'll
have 10-20 bikes on the cheapest locks on a campus bike rack, especially this
time of year, or he'll set up a sketchy meeting as in this story.

WTF are cops doing if they are not busting patently obvious theft rings?
Making this kind of bust should be utterly basic police work. It should be
what the new guy does on his first day. Oh, right, they are raising revenue
and fighting the long ago lost Drug War or looking for non-existent
"terrorists." This is why policing has utterly disconnected from quality of
life and middle class concerns.

~~~
FireBeyond
Hah. After I tracked down the seller of my stolen iPhone, I came across an
eBay profile that was about as blatant as you can imagine.

Laptops, iPads and all such things, most "without chargers". Phones, most
"activation locked".

100+ items.

Told the police. They declined to investigate.

~~~
Zigurd
Should have called back and said "Never mind, I shot him."

~~~
bfuller
you joke, but I have been told by police on two separate occasions (one car
break in, one apartment break in) that I should have shot the assailant rather
than calling the police first.

------
emmelaich
I had my bike stolen while a poor student at University. It was my only mode
of transport I had and it was the best bike I have ever owned. As the article
mentions it's true that bike ownership can have a emotional aspect that other
things don't.

I even remember seeing the guy who probably stole it. He was wearing a
greatcoat even though the weather wasn't cold.

He would needed a greatcoat to hide the giant boltcutters he would have needed
to cut through the very good chain I used to lock my bike up.

Still bitter.

~~~
bfuller
I cycle about 40-60 miles around my major metro most days, and I also see a
guy pretty often cycling in a big heavy coat, even in 100 degree (f) heat.

I wonder if he is a thief.

~~~
zodiakzz
Well, is he on a different bike every time?

~~~
bfuller
No, but why would he be? It makes the most sense to scout for bikes on one
bike and when you find a score stash it as soon as possible, not ride around
town leisurely on a stolen bike

------
Paul_S
This is such a frustrating issue. I understand that from a financial
perspective it makes no sense to try and stop people stealing bikes or
vandalising cities and I'm falling over myself trying to find a justification
for doing so anyway but has any city ever tried?

~~~
crispyambulance
Bikes are just like any other stolen item. They typically end up with brokers
who warehouse and distribute these goods in ways that are hard to scrutinize.
The problem is that there will always be crackheads and there will always be
sketchy people that willing to transact stolen goods. Its like a cosmic-scale
version of wack-a-mole.

The best way to deal with bike theft is for owners to get wise about how they
store and lock their bikes. Some amount of common sense about bike choice
helps too. If you can afford a $3000 bike you can also afford a secondary $100
bike that doesn't make bike thieves salivate while you're grocery shopping.

~~~
brewdad
But it doesn't have to be this way. I was in Copenhagen a few weeks ago. I
couldn't get over the number of bikes parked overnight that were locked only
to themselves. Many bikes simply had their U-lock run through their front tire
as a deterrent to anyone who might ride off on it. The bikes weren't actually
locked to anything at all. Amazingly, these bikes were still there in the
morning. In Portland, none of those bikes would have lasted an hour "locked"
like that.

Ask yourself "why is that?"

~~~
analogmemory
What percentage of Denmark's population is transient/homeless? People with
nothing to lose are more likely to steal something.

~~~
brewdad
That's a bit of my point. In America, we allow far too many to get to a place
where they have nothing left to lose. I'm not sure if Basic Income is the
answer. Perhaps an actual mental health system. Whatever the solution, the
status quo in the USA is shameful.

~~~
wpietri
Yeah, I'm definitely for an actual mental health system. As well as a free,
robust, and easily available addiction treatment system. And an energetic
program to get down-and-out people off the street and back into productive
lives.

People inevitably say, "what will it cost?" But that ignores how much we spend
now. Wasted lives, mangled minds, broken families that pass trauma and
dysfunction to the next generation.

Having personally lost bikes and chased thieves, I applaud join this
vigilante's efforts. But that can't be the only thing to do. No 7-year-old
wants to grow up to be a meth-addicted bike thief. As doing a Five Whys
teaches us, if you're serious about solving a problem, you have to attack
multiple levels of causality at once.

------
vonklaus
Pretty interesting & fun story. The article itself was did go a bit over the
top beleaguring the heroic super-hero nature of the person, but if you can
read around the purple prose & redundant praise there were some cool pieces of
info:

\- The bike index is an interesting concept, working around the balkanized
nature of PD databases.

\- The actual narrative was quite funny & interesting.

\- How pervasive an issue this is escaped me as a non-biker. I didn't realize
how expensive bikes are and how often they get ripped off.

------
bfuller
My friend recently had his bike stolen. It was recovered after it was thrown
over a fence of a local business.

The thief most likely didnt know how to ride a fixed gear with no brakes,
crashed, and ditched the bike.

~~~
NLips
A bike with no brakes is dangerous. Almost good riddence.

~~~
quantumhobbit
Fixed gear bikes have the brakes built in. Just stop peddling.

~~~
bfuller
or put your feet on the ground

~~~
kpil
I recommend diving face first into the first available wall. That is by far
the fastest way to reduce the speed.

If a wall is not situated conveniently enough, old ladies are surprisingly
sturdy, and will stop even a high speed fixed-gear hipster at the reasonable
cost (to the cyclist) of a broken hip or a few legs or arms.

------
troymc
It seems to me that the connecting of bikes on Bike Index with bikes for sale
on various online marketplaces could be, at least partially, automated. It
seems like a fun challenge, especially the pictures-only marketplaces...

~~~
bfuller
Like I posted somewhere else in this thread, people fencing stolen goods
usually list a bike that is different from, but similar to the bike (or any
other item) they are selling. When contacted, they'll say they already sold
that bike, but can gladly sell this other bike they have that is similar, and
usually for a lower price that almost guarantees a purchase.

------
danblick
I'm disappointed this article wasn't about Seattle's true superhero, Phoenix
Jones.

[https://youtu.be/t2pNxzmZDbs](https://youtu.be/t2pNxzmZDbs)

~~~
loeg
Phoenix is by all accounts not helping:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenix_Jones#Arrest_record](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenix_Jones#Arrest_record)

~~~
35bge57dtjku
You mean he has more than a single arrest with no charges?

~~~
loeg
"Seattle City Attorney Pete Holmes has called Jones a "deeply misguided
individual."

------
xendo
Here is an idea. Given a Craigslist listings and Tensor Flow deep learning
whatever, build a tool for searching stolen bikes -- batman style.

~~~
analogmemory
The people selling stolen bikes often don't put much information, so you'd get
lots of false positives.

~~~
taeric
You _might_ get a lot of false positives. I'd go so far as to say it is
likely.

However, the point is the algorithm may just surface a pattern that you hadn't
considered.

------
habosa
I always wonder where this never ending market for stolen bikes is. I live in
SF I'm on my 3rd bike in two years, this time I learned my lesson and bought a
beater.

I'm also not sure what I want done about it. On one hand, feeling that your
personal property is unsafe makes it very hard to build a healthy community so
it's worth policing small thefts. On the other hand, I know the cops around
here have way bigger issues to tackle.

------
Practicality
Interesting. I always wondered what motivated this personality type. Seems
that they get a high from it. (Not that I am bothered by it, I am glad they
do).

------
caf

      But do you know 5miles? Or Letgo?  Or OfferUp or Neerbuy
      or Saily or VarageSale? These sites are a visual
      marketplace, showing pictures of an item but often 
      including few words to describe it. They offer the seller
      anonymity while making it hard for police or others to
      search the web for keywords. Lost a bike? You could spend
      hours scrolling through pictures across more than a
      half-dozen sites trying to track it down. Then do it
      again the next day. These sites may sell legit
      merchandise. But they’re also the 21st-century way to
      fence stolen goods.
    

This makes it sound an awful lot like these sites are knowingly - or at least
with a Lucille Bluth wink - catering to people fencing stolen goods.

~~~
bfuller
I seriously doubt their business model is based on fencing stolen goods but I
would be interested to hear the customer service directors excuse for why this
is not the case.

~~~
j28xfc5qsc
I don't work for one of those apps, but have used one. I like it because it is
a lower-friction way to buy and sell items. I can take pictures of items in my
garage with my phone and quickly list them without going to my desktop and
writing up a Craigslist post. It's the same old story of Uber/Tinder/etc
making something easy to do on your phone.

------
todd8
I've had three bikes stolen, but none in the traditional way of coming back to
a bike rack only to find the bike missing.

Two were stolen from my garage by workers, these were by people with jobs and
not by homeless crack heads. One was a $2500 road bike and the other was my
mountain bike.

The other a multi-speed street bike was lost to a mugging (like a bike-
jacking) by an organized bike theft gang of around eight that attacked me all
at once. (Stay clear of suspicious groups of cyclists in isolated areas where
one spry rider is riding double.)

The workers didn't get my nice tri-bike because it was in the house attached
to a wind-trainer.

It's all very irritating; the value of the bikes to the bike thief is so low
compared to the cost of replacing them.

------
bfuller
Here is an old Reddit AMAA of a bike thief that sheds some light on the
business and the reason the thieves are motivated to steal the bikes

~~~
Zanta
Looks like you're missing a link. Could you provide it please?

~~~
bfuller
sorry about that

[https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/cir79/iama_former_bik...](https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/cir79/iama_former_bike_thief_amaa/)

------
X-Istence
Had my bike stolen when I was in college. Still miss it, at the time the cops
didn't give two shits.

------
2bluesc
Anyone have experience with insurance companies like Velosurance[0] or claims
against renters (or homeowners with a reasonable deductible) insurance for
bike theft?

[0] [https://velosurance.com/](https://velosurance.com/)

------
s3b
Priceonomics did a story on the stolen bike problem :
[https://priceonomics.com/post/30393216796/what-happens-to-
st...](https://priceonomics.com/post/30393216796/what-happens-to-stolen-
bicycles)

------
0x38B
Minor, but: the URL has a bunch of params like a user ID from a mailing list.
Is it standard practice to remove these on HN? I wasn't sure but thought I'd
mention it.

------
prayerslayer
MUMEN RIDER!

