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Police take part in Steering Clear of Cycle Crime ConferenceWheel from stolen bike © Simon MacMichael.JPG

Police take part in Steering Clear of Cycle Crime Conference

One-day forum was a chance to share ideas about how to combat bike theft
by Alex Bowden
Tue, Jul 14, 2015 17:40
8

Officers from over 30 police forces have attended a one-day cycle crime forum, reports BikeBiz. Held last Thursday in Birmingham, the inaugural Steering Clear of Cycle Crime Conference was a chance to share best practice and examine successful operations which have helped reduce cycle crime. 

As well as police, representatives from local councils and members of cycling organisations were also in attendance. Over 380,000 bikes were stolen in England and Wales in 2013/14 and the event also featured statistics about the cost of cycle crime to police and councils.

The conference was organised by BikeRegister, the national cycle database. Its managing director, James Brown, felt that the event had been a success:

“We are delighted with the success of Steering Clear of Cycle Crime and are hugely grateful to all those police forces who attended. The intelligence and best practice shared meant that it was an extremely beneficial conference for all those present. Our aim was to help further reduce cycle crime across the UK, and we hope that goal will now be achieved.”

Brown himself was one of a number of different speakers and he emphasised the importance of having a single national database for bikes. He explained how BikeRegister is monitored for unusual criminal activity and how this has helped police catch thieves.

Detective Inspector John Justice and PC Mark Farmer from British Transport Police spoke about Operation Fiesta which is geared towards catching prolific bike thieves. They said that bike theft from London’s Paddington Station had been reduced by 76 per cent following the arrest of a gang targeting the area.

Sergeant Titus Halliwell from Roads and Transport Policing Command in the Metropolitan Police spoke about the ‘Lock Thieves Out’ campaign which was designed to raise awareness about how to properly secure a bike to a rack as well as offering other crime prevention tips.

There was also an interview with Andrew Gilligan, London’s Cycling Commissioner, who spoke to Brown about the challenges presented by cycle crime as well as government plans to reduce it.

Bike theft
Bikeregister
Alex Bowden

Alex has written for more cricket publications than the rest of the road.cc team combined. Despite the apparent evidence of this picture, he doesn't especially like cake.

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8 comments

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a.jumper | 8 years ago
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Make it mandatory to hand over personal data to private companies like immobilise or bike register? Because the Tories love red tape and restraint of competition, eh?

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kie7077 replied to a.jumper | 8 years ago
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a.jumper wrote:

Make it mandatory to hand over personal data to private companies like immobilise or bike register? Because the Tories love red tape and restraint of competition, eh?

Fair enough, when Halfords wanted my name, address and tel just to exchange something worth £10-£20 I kicked up a fuss.

The contact details should be optional for the customer, most people are subservient and will simply give their details when asked anyway.

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a.jumper | 8 years ago
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So which forces and councils were there?

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kie7077 | 8 years ago
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Surely catching bike thieves is a simple as going to look at bikes and checking the serial numbers.

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durandal replied to kie7077 | 8 years ago
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Assuming the bike's been registered, reported stolen and found in the hands of the thieves...

What needs to be done is for people to stop buying obviously nicked bikes! Remove the market, and you remove the crime. Even if you can just flog a bike for £20, that's £20 for a pair of bolt croppers and five minutes work.

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pmanc replied to durandal | 8 years ago
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durandal wrote:

What needs to be done is for people to stop buying obviously nicked bikes!

Except how is it obvious? Not all nicked bikes are being flogged by a dodgy geezer outside a seedy pub. So how do you keep a decent second-hand market working without fuelling the thefts?

Back to a single comprehensive up-to-date database. Although it never seemed to work for mobile phones. Who pays for it, and will people bother to get it updated when they sell (or give away) a bike?

I'm sticking with a good-quality d-lock.

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kie7077 replied to pmanc | 8 years ago
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Back to a single comprehensive up-to-date database. Although it never seemed to work for mobile phones. Who pays for it,

Such a database would take an amateur 5 minutes and the data would easily fit in your phone, cost should be negligible

But of course the problem is people don't take note of their bike serial number and they likely wouldn't be aware of the database. The solution would be to make it mandatory for sellers to enter the s/n + seller details into the database and notify to the buyer that this is done.

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durandal replied to pmanc | 8 years ago
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Quote:

Except how is it obvious? Not all nicked bikes are being flogged by a dodgy geezer outside a seedy pub.

They're being sold on Gumtree and Ebay, except the ones chucked in a container and sold overseas.

Warning signs would be:

Cheap.
Really cheap.
Seller knows nothing about this bike. Or that bike. Or bikes in general
Seller is cagey, or aggressive when questioned.
Seller is selling lots of bikes - either from the same profile, or description/names/contact numbers come up in searches.
Seller doesn't look like a cyclist (not to sterotype, but the tubby yoot smelling of weed who's turned up to sell a £2k road bike may not be the original owner)

If there were no market, there would be no crime. As it stands, the risk/reward is far too skewed in favour of the thief and/or the handler. People see a bargain and fail to ask the obvious questions.

If I were king of the police, I'd be keen to see measures implemented by Gumtree (et al) for the sale of pedal cycles to include:

  • Verified details of the seller - done properly, preferably by a human.
  • A requirement for the frame number to be posted as text accompanied by a close-up picture of the frame number (I'd even go as far to insist that the site generate a QR code to be printed out and displayed alongside to verify that the photo refers to that specific ad)
  • A requirement that the frame number be registered on immobilise.com for a given period of time.
  • And finally, that the site submit a list of those frame numbers to the police to check against their crime reports

Yes, its burdensome, but the turnover of nicked bikes is horrific. I'd also like bike shops to be required to sign customers up to immobilise.com, in the same way that IMEI numbers are registered, without opt-out.

Quote:

Back to a single comprehensive up-to-date database. Although it never seemed to work for mobile phones. Who pays for it, and will people bother to get it updated when they sell (or give away) a bike?

immobilise.com is already up and running, and has been for a few years now. Free to the user, paid for by the phone recyclers who use it to check phones submitted to them, as well as other second-hand retailers.

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