The Chainlink

What happens to stolen bikes?

My heart goes out to all those who have posted about stolen bikes and they raise this question: What happens to stolen bikes? Are they resold locally? On craigslist? Taken out of town? Broken down for parts? Repainted? Are these crimes of opportunity of one person or do multiple thieves scour the city for bikes? Are some bikes more prone to theft than others? Knowing the answers could help us attack the problem from the other side of the equation. 

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Permalink Reply by h' Zerocats on December 21, 2011 at 11:57am

Gene,

Good questions.

Many of your them can be at least partially answered by reading the Chicago Stolen Bike Registry:

http://stolenbike.org

There's a link on the main page where you can only view bikes that have been recovered.

We have taken pains to make sure the whole story of the recovery is clear, as well as all the details of the theft as reported directly by the victims, and clarified when necessary.

Permalink Reply by Doug Haynes on December 21, 2011 at 12:57pm

They get sold or parted out and sold.

They are both crimes of opportunity and organized efforts to find nice bikes; it depends on the specific thief.

Permalink Reply by Joe Willis on December 21, 2011 at 1:05pm

Swap-O-Rama is by fat the largest location of stolen bikes trying to be resold. I have coma across about 5 or 6 on CL in the last year, none of those where recovered because the police really don't give a $#!+. In one instance we had all the needed information plus his current address, 2 phone numbers email and all the info from the LBS he wrote a Fraudulent check for a bike willing to press charges. The Detective's final answer "I have tried calling but there is no answer." You will find a lot of parts on CL that are probability stolen (not all most are legit), if you are not sure ask the seller for the serial number!

P.S. Sorry to throw a rant in there but bike thieves get me all worked up and have a special place in HELL

Permalink Reply by Gene Tenner on December 21, 2011 at 1:40pm

Thanks for the posts.

I found the Report Statistics page from the Chicago Bike Registry (http://chicago.stolenbike.org/report-statistics) to be revealing. This is just a generalization, but here goes:

 

You are more likely to have your bike stolen if:

 

You have a common (road, mountain or hybrid),

Your bike is not locked or locked to a bicycle rack,

Your bike is locked to only the frame or the frame and the front wheel,

Your bike is locked in the front of a business or residence,

Your lock is a U-lock with a flat key or a cable lock, and

Your bike is all one plain color.

 

You are more likely to have your bike stolen if:

 

You have an unusual bike (fixed, track, cruiser or folding),

Your bike is locked to a street sign, railing or fence,

Your bike is locked to the frame and the back wheel or both wheels and frame,

Your bike is locked in a storage room, alley or side passageway,

Your lock is an older U-lock with a round key or a heavy duty security chain, and

Your bike is multi-colored.

Permalink Reply by Gene Tenner on December 21, 2011 at 1:42pm

Ooooops. The seco0nd set should read:

 

You are more likely to NOT have your bike stolen if:

 

You have an unusual bike (fixed, track, cruiser or folding),

Your bike is locked to a street sign, railing or fence,

Your bike is locked to the frame and the back wheel or both wheels and frame,

Your bike is locked in a storage room, alley or side passageway,

Your lock is an older U-lock with a round key or a heavy duty security chain, and

Your bike is multi-colored.

Permalink Reply by Kevin Mulcky on December 21, 2011 at 2:13pm


I wouldn't trust any of those stats.


Gene Tenner said:

Ooooops. The seco0nd set should read:

 

You are more likely to NOT have your bike stolen if:

 

You have an unusual bike (fixed, track, cruiser or folding),

Your bike is locked to a street sign, railing or fence,

Your bike is locked to the frame and the back wheel or both wheels and frame,

Your bike is locked in a storage room, alley or side passageway,

Your lock is an older U-lock with a round key or a heavy duty security chain, and

Your bike is multi-colored.

Permalink Reply by Joe Willis on December 21, 2011 at 2:31pm

This is just plane wrong!

There are a HUGE amount of track bikes (ss as well) stolen in the city.

Street signes are commonly refered to as dummy poles for a reason. Most fences are not secure at all.

"Your bike is locked to the frame and the back wheel or both wheels and frame,

Your bike is locked in a storage room, alley or side passageway" I can accept these"

They stopped making round u-lock keys because you can defeat them with a Bic pen. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-LWGJzglho&feature=related)

A thief could care less if it multi-colored, if they can make money off of it it is already gone!


Gene Tenner said:

Ooooops. The seco0nd set should read:

 

You are more likely to NOT have your bike stolen if:

 

You have an unusual bike (fixed, track, cruiser or folding),

Your bike is locked to a street sign, railing or fence,

Your bike is locked to the frame and the back wheel or both wheels and frame,

Your bike is locked in a storage room, alley or side passageway,

Your lock is an older U-lock with a round key or a heavy duty security chain, and

Your bike is multi-colored.

Permalink Reply by Duppie on December 21, 2011 at 2:52pm

I don't doubt you had good intentions, but drawing conclusions like the ones you do is dangerous. I slept through most of statistics class in college, but a few errors come to mind.

1. Sampling method appears to be biased. Since this is an online registry, it favors people who are comfortable with putting their information online, and have internet access.

2. Sampling size is unknown compared to total population. I am not aware of a reputable number of total bikes stolen or the total number of bikes in Chicago and their features.  So, you simply cannot state that your bike is less likely to be stolen if it multicolored if you do not know the percentage of multicolored bikes within the total bike population.

Mind you, I am highly appreciative of what Kevin C. and h' (are there others?) are doing with the registry. You just are trying to draw conclusions that are impossible to make.



Gene Tenner said:

Ooooops. The seco0nd set should read:

 

You are more likely to NOT have your bike stolen if:

 

You have an unusual bike (fixed, track, cruiser or folding),

Your bike is locked to a street sign, railing or fence,

Your bike is locked to the frame and the back wheel or both wheels and frame,

Your bike is locked in a storage room, alley or side passageway,

Your lock is an older U-lock with a round key or a heavy duty security chain, and

Your bike is multi-colored.

Permalink Reply by Kevin C Dormant on December 21, 2011 at 3:33pm

I've been occupied with other matters of late, but a couple of weeks ago I went through the CSBR and pulled out statistics for every bike reported to the registry between April 1st and October 31st of this year. The CSBR database cannot simply be searched in this fashion, and as a result this involved creating a 617 column spreadsheet manually. 

I am always careful about expressing theft statistics in terms of "reports to the CSBR" because I am sure we only receive some fraction of actual thefts. I submitted a FOIA request to the CPD (est. >5000 thefts annually) and have attempted to glean info form the FBI Uniform Crime Statistics, but there does not even seem to be widespread agreement about the degree to which bike theft is underreported, though there certainly is agreement that it is (usually about 25-30% report rate).

I intended to present the data in a more detailed post (and still might), but a few things did jump out for the period 4/1/11-10/31/11:

How they were locked:

23.34% were NOT LOCKED (higher than historical)

36.79% were locked with a CABLE LOCK (higher than historical)

13.61% NEWER U-LOCK with flat key (lower than historical)

Where they were locked:

37.44% were unlocked in a garage, porch, backyard, or common area of a building

Additionally, only 36.30% submitted their report with a serial number and perhaps most disturbing, only 1.78% of these reported thefts resulted in a recovery (against historic recovery rate of 3.38%) We did have two reports this year of stolen bikes that were cross-locked; i.e. two u-locks or a u-lock and a security chain.

Given these recovery rates, the only statistically sound practice is to lock your bike every time with the best u-lock or two that you can afford. Lock it to a bike rack. Wrought iron fences and porch railings get cut or broken often. Bikes in storage lockers, common garages and bike rooms should be locked as if you were leaving the bike out overnight in front of a Metra station. All of which are very common sites of thefts reported. If you can avoid it, don't leave your bike out over night. Bring it inside. Cable locks should not be used under any circumstances-EVER. Once your bike is gone, it's gone. (notwithstanding the occasional heart-warming recovery story).

As for types of bikes that are stolen, I've come to believe that the reports to the CSBR are a good statistical representation of the types of bikes that people own. Old bikes, new bikes, ugly bikes, fixed, cyclocross, racing, carbon, steel, titanium, Dutch, mountain all get stolen. Fewer Dutch bikes get stolen only because there are fewer out there. More fixed gears get stolen because, right now, there are more out there. 

For the period 4/1/11-10/31/11, it appears that we're getting worse at locking our bikes. Over 60% of the thefts reported to the CSBR during the 2011 prime theft time were either not locked or were locked with a cable lock. That's pretty pathetic.

Permalink Reply by Gene Tenner on December 21, 2011 at 4:19pm

Hey, thanks for all the posts on this and reminding me about that D I got in statistics and not beating me up to badly over my miscues. You guys are good. I learned a lot. One was that a lot of stolen bikes that were eventually recovered were done so at Swap-O-Rama at 41st and Ashland. Is there something that can be done about this fencing-o-rama? The other is Craigslist. Any suggestions out there on how to put pressure on these stolen-bike arenas?

Permalink Reply by h' Zerocats on December 21, 2011 at 4:26pm

Thanks, Kevin, that's great. I've also had the impression that we're losing the battle of getting the word out about cable locks.

As suggested there are too many flaws mostly based on the fact that the sample is self-selecting to try to use the Registry stats for anything but putting a general picture together. You get a much better picture scanning and reading the first 2-3 pages of listings.

That said, if others would take a minute to take a look and then slow down a bit and think about the way the data is presented and what conclusions can be drawn from it, I think it's pretty unlikely you'd draw the same conclusions as Gene.

Token example:

"Newer U-lock with Flat Key"-- consider that the cable locks are broken down into sub-categories before concluding that you're more likely to get a bike stolen when using a U-lock.

Permalink Reply by Joe Willis on December 21, 2011 at 5:22pm

We could pool all of our knowledge together and make a "How not to get your bike stolen" article with everything for first time riders to final touches for the pro's.

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