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Permalink Reply by Vilda on September 24, 2010 at 2:11am

I don't got it. I arrived on the scene long after the lock was cut. The CPD and firefighters were gettin the paperwork squared away and the bike was already in the back of the SUV.

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Permalink Reply by Far'arned Retrogrumpalunkus #63 on September 24, 2010 at 6:27am

Howard,

Are you saying that thieves purposely lock a bike to another bike rather than to something solid like everyone else when they are "letting it cool down" after they steel it and before they move or sell it off?

Why would they do this and/or how does it help them to lock it to another person's bike where it might attract attention when the person comes back to find his bike immobilized and might call the cops?

Or are you saying that a thief might lock a junk bike to a target bike to immobilize it on purpose so they can come back later to steal it when it is dark and deserted because the owner couldn't take it home? I would suppose the owner would be very suspicious if the would-be thief simply put their own lock on it but if it were a whole bike they might suppose it was an accident and decide to "wait it out" overnight.

As an aside: I'm just asking out of curiosity for a clarification of what you mean -this isn't meant as an opportunity for you get all butthurt again and start changing subject lines to my name in a silly attempt to make me look bad. Hopefully you've learned I really don't care what people think of me, since most of them don't do it (thinking, that is) very much anyhow.

H3N3 said:

I have heard of thieves doing this when setting up freshly stolen bikes for pickup.
If I can get a description I can watch for it on the registry. State and Jackson is not enough since a thief would have ridden it from several blocks away.

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Permalink Reply by Michael Perz on September 24, 2010 at 6:42am

Weird. The only time I've actually experienced this was when a messenger locked his bike to mine outside of the building where I work. I thought it was audaciously rude and would have had a word or two with him had I walked out of work any sooner and caught up before he took off. I've never heard of thieves doing this.

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Permalink Reply by Far'arned Retrogrumpalunkus #63 on September 24, 2010 at 7:36am

H3N3 said:

a thief drops off his partner, partner frees a bike, rides it off, locks it at a collecting point, goes and gets one or two more, partner with van picks up from this point (either one by one or multiples.) Nobody at the collecting point sees a bike being stolen, just unlocked, so there's nothing to cool down.

That's exactly what I mean by "cool down"

They pick it up and put it into a van, truck or whatever in a different place and time than that which the theft occurred -far enough away and removed in time and space from the victim and any witnesses who saw them cut the lock or whatever to forcefully remove it at the original crime scene.

It seems like this might be what happened here. The thief might have been in too much of a hurry to find a good spot to "ditch" it temporarily before his accomplices could pick it up so I suppose they might just lock it to anything convenient fast (thieves don't like getting a freshly-stolen bike stolen in turn from them either).

I would think that a smart thief (I'm assuming a lot here) would want to get away from the bike quickly and disassociate himself (or herself) from the evidence until he can be sure he got away cleanly from the scene of the crime -but not put his loot at risk by locking it to another bike which would just attract attention to it which is the last thing he wants.

Perhaps they would lock it to another bike, like you said, because they don't have to wait long for the bike to cool off or to collect some more stolen bikes to the same area for mass pick-up.

It's an interesting system if that is what some of them are doing. Horrible and wrong -but interesting nonetheless.

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