We had our garage broken into at 7:15a on Monday, July 30th. My husband saw and heard the guy fumbling around to get our driveway gate open and out he rode after he  crashed our steel service door in on the garage. Husband chased him, barefoot, but wasn't able to catch him. Boo. Called police, went through the whole routine of filing a report, etc. I immediately made fliers and started hanging them up in the neighborhood, posted something on our neighborhood's Facebook page letting neighbor's know what's going on around here. We live in Old Irving.

Anyway, a neighbor that sees the post on fb, tells another neighbor how our garage was broken into and to be careful with locking stuff up. Well, as it turns out, the neighbor that was told about my bike saw the guy riding my bike (and towing another alongside him) around 7:30am the morning it was stolen. She knows him because she's a teacher at the school around the corner from our house. We make contact with her/police, she identifies this moron in a picture lineup before they even get his picture down on her table. During our conversations, she mentions that the moron that stole my bike has a little brother that she still is in contact with every so often. Her giving me all this info, identifying the guy, talking with police all happened on Tuesday morning. I call the detective assigned our case, he never returns my call. 

Wednesday night I get a call from an another neighbor, that also saw this guy riding my bike in her alley on the morning the bike was stolen. Ironically, I saw her while I was posting fliers the morning of the theft and she told me the same info. So Wednesday night, I get a call from her telling me that she recognizes a kid that looks familiar in the same place as she is and he's been hurt/arrested riding a stolen bike. She thinks it's the kid that stole my bike and that he looks exactly like who she saw in her alley the morning of the burglary. She overhears his name and even though it's not the guy who stole my bike--it's his little freaking brother that the teacher told me about Tuesday morning. Nice, huh?! I call the detective handling the case again, leave a second message to give him more info (oh, and I also called Tuesday night when someone called from a flier with a spotting of my bike at Irving/Kimball). The detective never returns my call. I call in between times to try and catch the detective to no avail as well. 

So essentially, my neighbors have helped me solve this case, for the most part anyways. We know who burglarized our garage and stole my bike, his little brother was also caught on a stolen bike, but I can't get the detective handling our case to give me a 5 minute call with an update?! I was essentially told one night when I explained the situation to the officer that answered the phone at the Belmont/Western station that, "Even though I think my bike and garage being burglarized is a top priority, that there were just 4 people shot in however many hours and that my bike isn't on the top of detective's lists...Rahm won't hire more cops, detectives, etc., etc." I gave him a snarky reply back but the point is, I just want a 5 minute call, that's all. I get that my bike and garage aren't as bad as the shootings that are happening here, but we were victimized too and not to mention, we pay a shit ton of taxes to live here and deserve to have some sort of follow up on the case. All the info I have is secondhand and maybe if they would've arrested this punk Tuesday after he was identified, I might have had a better chance of getting my bike back. I know that he's not been arrested as of Thursday night because he's still "friending"  his little gangbanger buddies on Facebook. I pretty much have zero hope that I'll ever see my bike again. Boo. This whole situation is such crap. 

http://chicago.stolenbike.org/node/193057