In a statement that is unlikely to inspire confidence with cyclists, British Transport Police has today told road.cc that bike thefts are “unlikely to ever be solved” and there is “limited opportunity for investigation” in many cases. The comments come in response to a spoof sign that was placed at one railway station’s supposedly secure cycle parking facility last week, renaming the bike racks a “Bicycle Redistribution Point”.
The official-looking sign appeared at Chichester railway station, the man behind the “depressingly accurate” warning having since been dubbed the West Sussex city’s “answer to Banksy” amid his attempts to highlight the issue of bike thefts at the site.
The campaigner behind it – who wishes to remain anonymous and is known only as CARP (Chichester Anti-Recreation Partnership) – installed dozens of the parody signs around Chichester since August after noticing that signs warning or prohibiting locals from doing something were “everywhere”. He uploads pictures of the signs to his social media page and last week turned his attention to the station and its bike theft problem.
When road.cc contacted British Transport Police for comment about the sign and the wider scourge of bicycle thefts seen at stations across the United Kingdom, we were told issues of CCTV or bike sheds/cycle racks would be for the railway operators to decide.
A spokesperson went on to claim that while the force acknowledges how “upsetting, inconvenient and potentially costly” bike thefts are, there “can often be limited opportunity for investigation” and that “some crimes that are unlikely to ever be solved”.
British Transport Police commented: “Whilst we know that offences such as the theft of a bike or suitcase are upsetting, inconvenient and potentially costly, there can often be limited opportunity for investigation.
“Our experience tells us at an early stage that there are some crimes that are unlikely to ever be solved – such as those without a clear estimate of time or location for the incident or if there is a lack of clear CCTV or witnesses.
“The more time our officers spend reviewing CCTV footage for these offences, the less time they have available for patrolling railway stations and trains, investigating crimes which cause the most harm and providing a visible presence across the network.
“Any offence which is not investigated will still provide us with valuable intelligence, used to direct our patrols and operations.
“We continue to investigate all types of crimes while ensuring our officers are maximising their available time across the network for passengers and rail staff where they’re needed the most.”
The sign at Chichester station appeared last week, the city having long featured prominently in studies listing the places in Britain where you’re most likely to get your bike nicked, with the city’s railway station – and in particular its supposedly CCTV-monitored cycle parking unit – a notable hotspot for opportunistic thieves.
“I decided to create the sign after noticing just how many posts were popping up in local community groups about bike thefts, often several times a week,” CARP told road.cc on Friday.
“What stood out to me was that the overwhelming majority of these incidents were happening in this specific spot at the station, which made it feel like an issue that needed highlighting in a memorable way.”
The sign, attached to a pole outside the station’s bike parking facility and installed last week, depicts a masked man, huge bolt cutters strapped to his bike, riding away with a presumably stolen bike, with the caption: “Chichester Bicycle Redistribution Point. Many thanks for your donations.”
Logos of both Southern Rail and Sussex Police are also featured in the sign, alongside the satirical disclaimer: “Brought to you by Southern Rail. Police logo included for aesthetics only (they don’t like getting involved).”
“The response has been overwhelmingly positive – people seem to enjoy the humour but also appreciate the way it shines a light on the problem,” CARP continued.
“It’s clear that the issue here is lack of action from Southern Rail and the police. My hope is that this will spark some action from them to improve security and deter thefts in the area. However, I haven’t heard of any changes as yet.”
A spokesperson for Govia Thameslink Railway said: “We recognise how distressing it can be when you have a bike stolen. This is why we host regular bike marking sessions at Chichester Station and work closely with the British Transport Police. Registering a bike is free, and reduces the likelihood of theft and increases the chance of recovery.
“Ultimately, though, the best deterrent is a quality D-lock attaching the frame and front wheel to the bike stand, and a second lock securing the rear wheel to the frame.”
Last year the Liberal Democrats warned that bike theft had been effectively “decriminalised” after analysis of home office data found that 89 per cent of reported cases go unsolved. That story came just a few months after the grim reality of Britain’s bike theft problem was emphasised once again, with the number of bicycles stolen from train stations up 39 per cent year-on-year.
And the growing questions about police inaction have led some victims to take matters into their own hands. In October, one London-based cyclist – whose bike was stolen from the communal hallway of his block of flats, before immediately appearing on online marketplace Gumtree – made sure their case was “difficult to ignore” for the police, by tracking down the culprit within 48 hours and guiding officers right to his doorstep, leading to his arrest and a criminal charge.
21 thoughts on “Police force admits bike thefts “unlikely to ever be solved” after spoof sign pokes fun at station’s “Bicycle Redistribution Point””
What’s the point of all the
What’s the point of all the CCTV then, if you need officers on the beat anyway? Why not just… have enough officers on the beat then?
Yes, they have limited time
Yes, they have limited time to search the CCTV footage – which is why you’d hope they’d be familiar with the binary search method,which reduces the required time, enormously. Anyway, these thefts are so common, it must be possible to arrange a few sting ooerations
belugabob wrote:
I’d hope that they are processing the video with machine learning to identify all likely thefts given the behaviours of the miscreants. However it is the Police Service so they probably don’t have the money to do that..
It does require at least some
It does require at least some ‘I’ to be able to deploy ‘AI’ effectively.
Not always as the ML models
Not always as the ML models can be provided already trained for reuse, thus avoiding the training process where that ‘I’ is required because it’s fundamentally a manual correction of the model results until the accuracy (correction avoidance) reaches an acceptable level.
Fully accept that the local police service you have to deal with would have no money or interest in ML.
You would be justified to point out that trained ML wil do 99% of that assessment work so they can just put their feet up as usual 😉
Presumably the police are
Presumably the police are worried by competition from not-terribly-smart machine learning? You’d think they’d be in tune with “mechanically following an opaque process” but presumably that doesn’t offer sufficient “operational flexibility”? (Example: “no, I have no idea who is the driver in that picture of Fred Smith from the club clearly driving his car bearing his registration plate two inches from a cyclist; there’s no evidence to proceed”).
What really stands out is the contrast when people (as have posted here) do discover the odd cyclist or road safety enthusiast amongst the police who does in fact take this seriously and applies the letter of the law.
Quote:
The inference is that it is that they have to take trained bobbies off the beat to sit in front of monitors reviewing hours of cctv footage. Surely that can’t be the case.
Also, the throwaway suggestion at the end there that the police aren’t actually that bothered about bicycle theft because there will always be a more serious crime to deal with.
Sriracha wrote:
There’s also the inference
There’s also the inference that bobbies on the beat are actually achieving something useful. My understanding is that the evidence suggests patrolling is a pretty inefficient use of police time – that wandering around aimlessly hoping that you bump into a criminal is not actually very effective.
Certainly when it comes to bike theft at stations, it would appear that whatever level of “visible presence” there is, is woefully inadequate at preventing crime. And thieves knowing that there is going to be essentially zero investigation after-the-fact no doubt contributes to the lack of deterrent.
I think the arguments are
I think the arguments are that it a) make people “feel more secure” b) perhaps deters the odd criminal and c) ensures police are “in touch with what’s happening on their streets” (e.g. it serves an intelligence-gathering / awareness-raising function).
I don’t know but I suspect that apart from (a) those are probably of limited value indeed. And currently may be hard to measure against objectives? But it can be an easy deliverable for politicians to quiet a major source of complaints e.g. “I’ve never seen any police round here…” / “They spend all their time filling in forms not chasing criminals…”
The last part may be true – likely paperwork and procedural requirements continually increase (because courts and lawyers, new standards and more laws). But merely kicking the police out of the office doesn’t fix that.
So sadly it may be something there is both pressure to make the police do AND this may actually reduce the effectiveness of the police detecting and dealing with crime.
I take it they’re not up-to
I take it they’re not up-to-date with crime fighting methods such as using a tracked “honey-pot” bike?
hawkinspeter wrote:
FTFY 😀
The other thing the police
The other thing the police response is missing is the big picture. They imply that the “harm” of bike theft is limited to the victims, and the inconvenience and cost they suffer. They fail to consider the impact on society as a whole, that a lot of people are put off cycling altogether because of the risk of theft.
I very much doubt they care
I very much doubt they care (or to be fair – they don’t see it’s their responsibility to tackle).
Plus this is the system that brought us “if the driver didn’t actually hit you (and indeed sometimes if they did but you’re not dead or missing limbs) then you are not a victim of crime but just a witness”!
(Presumably that could be fixed with a small tweak in the law or maybe even just some direction to the police, given that the offense of “assault” doesn’t require contact? Obviously nobody would think of charging close-passing drivers with assault though – that would be a total lack of common sense!)
This is what I have to take
This is what I have to take with me every time I go out cycling even if it’s going to be a brief stop. Not foolproof, but it’ll slow them up a bit and may just deter them. It’s not over-reaction or panicing, it’s genuinely that bad here. The chain isn’t just for security it’s for self-defence as well because of the bike robberies (somewhere at knife-point) we’ve had. The Police had a bike unit that patrolled the bike paths at one time as well as on the street, but that got cut years ago
In fairness to BTP they aren
In fairness to BTP they aren’t that well-funded and are spread pretty thinly across the rail network. As to policing and funding priorities I think we have to be realistic. Bike thefts have never been a police priority, nor will they ever be, especially with the amount of violent and other serious crime there is now. Nor will our councils provide the kind of secure bike parking that cyclists in the Netherlands have given the financial trouble that many of them are in.
We need to take more responsibility for our own security instead of relying on others. The following are a few simple steps we can all do:-
-Spend some money on good locks. Not foolproof, but the better they are the longer it’ll take them to steal your bike. Dump the cheap cable locks; they’re useless.
-Make sure you know your frame number. How many of us do know it?
-Register your bike on the Police registration site and keep a screenshot/print out of your entry.
-Park it in an area where there is good CCTV coverage. The more the police have to go on the more likely they’ll be to follow it up.
-Start a workplace bike bus or train if people are worried about being jumped whilst going to and from work. Encourage your childrens’ schools to start one as well.
-Ask your employer to provide an onsite cycle parking area if possible.
-Search for any bike cafes that provide secure parking. Our local one offers parking and safe storage at very reasonable rates
If you do want to raise Police awareness of the problem locally go to your local Partnerships and Communities Together (PACT) meetings where you will be able to speak to Police Officers. Try and get as many other local cyclists as possible to go with you so the Police can see the strength of feeling there is about it.
biking59boomer wrote:
Agree to the first part, but let’s not get scared by the headlines. The picture is more complex when you look closer but I think since you were a lad violent crime has gone down, even as reporting has (generally) gone up and more things are considered a crime – especially sexual violence.
Probably true although that’s “because politics” – it’s substantially cheaper than building/fixing road infra and economically this is missing a trick [1] [2]. (If only they could get the numbers cycling up – which of course isn’t easy at all).
Most of this is reasonable advice – and if you have a very regular route the “get together with others” advice is good. For general use you missed what I now consider the best advice – just avoid any bike you value appearing on a thief’s radar. The other way round – any bike you think might get stolen (e.g. you park and leave in many urban areas, or in a “secure bike store” or your shed) shouldn’t be one you miss.
If someone wants to take it all the CCTV / recovery / police stuff won’t help at all.
For a bike you like simply never be far from your bike. So it lives inside your house (maybe your room?), comes into your office with you / the shop etc, OR ensure the bike is cheap, ideally 2nd hand, certainly old and unfashionable and with low-tech parts. It should visibly be crappy / grubby and ideally rusty or damaged-looking.
I go for the first strategy most of the time, I admit, I do like bikes more than 100 quid … but if I have to leave my bike anywhere in public for more than an say an hour (in daylight!) I take my beater bike.
For the same reason I would avoid a particularly good lock (unless you also have the bike securely inside). Certainly, cable ones will barely defeat young kids and most can be cut silently. I wouldn’t go much further though – if someone wants the bike (you didn’t make it look more crap than the next bike) there’s almost no lock that will stop them (angle grinders). A few hundred quid of chopped locks will just be extra rain on your parade.
And there are a few loons who may trash your bike / take parts “for the lolz” anyway.
https://www.transperth.wa.gov
https://www.transperth.wa.gov.au/Cycling
It boggles my mind that where I live has actually a system in place addressing this problem and it’s not rocket surgery either…
In Perth, you need a registered smartrider card (public transport swipe card) linked to two nominated bike shelters to access those bike shelters. So theoretically anyone in the bike shelter has their name and address, time of entry and exit logged in the system. Plus there’s still CCTV. So if your bike is sadly swiped the crim will be in the system. So at least our lot are making the minimum and most obvious effort, whereas the lot in the article haven’t even achieved that.
Some kind of link is a good
Some kind of link is a good idea (your national train card is used in many facilities in NL – indeed you can even hire bikes with that also).
For the UK of course this only if authorities accept that it needs staff and preventing theft (never mind dealing with it if it happens) is important (also see info here).
No AI face recognition or
No AI face recognition or data mining is required. The technology that best reduces theft is: a locked door. Look at the top photo in the article. Stick a flipping door there and you’re well on the way to having solved the problem.
That’s part. My bike was
That’s part. My bike was stolen from behind a locked door – in fact that just gave them a nice workspace as the lock was bypassable and the bike store unobserved.
The missing part is alert people – staff – prepared to do something.
And police prepared to attend as it may be too much to hope the staff are prepared for violence.
Locks – including those in doors – just slow thieves down or make their accessing something obvious. They’re in part a delay mechanism giving people time to respond.