Since the beginning of June, Calgarians have reported approximately 106 bike thefts to the Calgary Police Service.
As the summer goes on, victims post in stolen bike groups across social media almost daily. Even with the over a hundred verified reports, the number of stolen bikes is speculated to be larger, with many thefts going unreported.
Duc Vo, whose bike got stolen while parked outside of a grocery store last year, had another bike stolen while locked in his front yard on July 7.
“This one, I really cared about. That’s why I reported it to the police. I filed a report, and then I put it up on Bike Index,” he said.
“I didn’t have the serial number for the bike, so it’s gonna be harder for them to find.”
According to Sgt, Nick Wilsher, the Calgary police work closely with an online bike registry platform called Bike Index. The website allows cyclists to record their bike’s serial number and upload photos and detailed descriptions to help identify their bike if it’s lost or stolen.
“A lot of our recovered bikes are where members of the public have seen a bike, they check Bike Index or one of the other registries, find out that it’s stolen and then immediately contact us,” Wilsher said.
According to Wilsher, police view bike theft as a high-priority offence, noting that some bikes are worth thousands of dollars. Even if a bike’s monetary value is low, its importance can be significant.
“The actual social value that (victims) feel towards it is quite high and that’s how we see it. It’s a quality of life issue,” he said.
“We certainly understand how (victims) feel, and we understand that it is something that curtails their enjoyment.“
Wilsher urged Calgarians to familiarize themselves with the bike index before their bike is stolen, if they can.
“We are very active as a service, our beat teams and our mountain bike teams do a great job in keeping an eye out for bikes and trying to recover as many as we can.”
An organized operation
A resident in the Marda Loop area, Lola Laurin, had a particularly troubling case last week on Wednesday, July 22, where suspects entered her property and stole thousands of dollars in bike equipment late at night.
“We had all of our bikes in our garage, along with a two-wheel dog trailer,” she said.
“In the morning, the garage door was open for our detached garage. We went in, and we discovered that three bikes and one two-wheel dog trailer were stolen. Two electric bikes and one regular.”
Laurin said she filed a police report, registered it into the Bike Index and made posts about it in stolen bike Facebook groups. One of their neighbours who saw the post located the regular mountain bike in an alley just four blocks away. But the two electric bikes and dog trailer remain missing.
Laurin suspects the theft was organized. According to the CCTV footage she has of the crime, one of the suspects scoped out the area around 1:30 in the morning. Two hours later, she and another suspect were back with their faces covered.
The suspects entered through the backyard gate and went into the garage. Following the theft, there was tape covering light motion sensors, along with smoked cigarettes and a crack pipe.
“The part that really caused me so much anger was the feeling of violation and knowing that we’d been specifically targeted and tracked,” she said.
“We’ve since installed five cameras on our property, front and back, automatic locking deadbolts on all of our doors in our home and rather than just bike locks in the garage, we now lock up and chain our bikes to the wall.”
Since Laurin filed the report, investigators deemed it an active case and are on the lookout. After this experience, she urges other bike owners to prioritize security no matter what.
“Don’t take it lightly, take it seriously,” she said.
“Do what you can to protect your property so you don’t have to go through this very uncomfortable grieving process.”
Wilsher said that cases like Laurin’s are rare and that bike theft is largely opportunistic. Typically, a thief who spots an unattended bike or a bike protected by an easily broken lock may take it regardless of its whereabouts.
Preventive measures are crucial
Bike thieves love cable locks, and according to Wilsher, the first thing bike owners should do is invest in a good bike lock. He said the most affordable effective locks are typically U-shaped metal locks.
“There’s also the other locks you can get where the actual chain is contained within a cylindrical tube that rolls,” he said.
“Anybody trying to cut into it, the blade would keep rolling, making it a lot more difficult to remove or to cut through.”
Wilsher said recording detailed descriptions of your bike is important so that if it’s stolen, you have all the elements investigators would need to find it. Recording the serial number and having pictures of defining features like stickers or accessories prepared will aid in the search.
“The biggest challenge that we face is that a lot of people don’t record that serial number, and that’s really important,” he said.
“It’s a great resource that you can then come to us and go, ‘This is what it looks like. Here’s a description of it,’ and it helps us actually locate and return those bikes.”
In some cases, stolen bikes end up on second-hand marketplaces, being resold for a profit.
When this happens, people can report the potentially stolen property listing to the police and the online stolen property team can typically recover it, Wilsher said.
According to Wilsher, underground pick-n-pull style operations take stolen bikes in exchange for money. These operations then Frankenstein the parts into new bikes, making it difficult for police to track them down.
“We have lots of locations where we find a backyard full of bike parts,” he said.
“Thieves take them somewhere, and it’s a bit like a chop shop with cars. They’re trying to merge many bikes together, so it makes it difficult to identify which bike is which.”
While investigators continue searching for stolen bikes across the city, police say a strong lock, a recorded serial number and a Bike Index registration can make a crucial difference.
