Bike Thief PHOTO: stealing Red Specialized @ 165 N Canal 9/23

Forwarded from a friend. She wasn't able to do enough to stop him, but did get a photo of a man stealing a bike across from 165 N Canal.

Apparently, he took the tire off the bike that was locked via ulock to a pole, put a new one on and rode away.

Stray Observations:

Pass this on to people you know who had a bike (or tire) stolen yesterday. Perhaps it will bring them joy, anger, closure or all of the above.
PLEASE LOCK YOUR BIKE BETTER. Holy crap people. Resource: http://www.activetrans.org/commute/tricks-tips/parking
He obviously stole a front tire from another bike and then helped himself which totally settles the "what the hell do these people do with one tire"question I've always had.
Memorize this face and if you see him walking around with a bike part, call the police and start yelling at him so people will start looking. (Insert warning about being REALLY SURE THIS IS THE SAME PERSON - the missing front teeth and glasses are helpful.)
Please don't do the chainlink troll thing and yell about my friend not chaining herself to the bike and pulling a batman on this crook. You weren't there, you don't know my friend and until you earn some sincere bike thief vigilante street cred - shut up.

Sorry if # 4 was ugly or presumptuous. I'm just tired of the non constructive discussions and honestly don't have time for it.

BOO BIKE THIEVES!

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Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Tom Dworzanski on September 27, 2013 at 3:42pm

With all do respect, the norm is CC. We are were the experiment.

h' 1.0 said:

I'd want to see a boatload more "studying" before such a potentially horrific "experiment" were unleashed on the Chicago "population."

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Permalink Reply by Tom Dworzanski on September 27, 2013 at 3:54pm

Do you know what the Illinois requirements for concealed carry are?

Tip: They won't be on the Huffington Joke.

Skip Montanaro 12mi said:

Rich's reference suggests that in our rush to legalize concealed carry, we haven't even taken minimal steps to make sure that people know how to handle a gun properly before we allow them to pack heat.
We put up with all sorts of regulations related to motor vehicles, none of which seem to have affected the sheer number of cars, trucks, buses and motorcycles on the road. I don't know how many of you have kids of driving age. My wife and I had to supervise my youngest son for 50 hours on-road before he could get a license. That was in addition to the usual driver's ed course and written and practical tests administered by the state. Ownership of guns and cars in the US is similar (> 800 per 1000 people). The author of the above piece indicates that gun deaths per year in the US are on pace to surpass the number of car deaths per year within the next three years (citing a piece in The Independent which itself cites some Bloomberg research). In the aggregate, guns appear to be about as lethal as cars. We do all sorts of things as a society in an attempt to make cars safer (education, safety features, special permits, etc), but do none of this for guns.

I donate to the NRA every time a I hear a push to ban guns. I don't own a gun and don't intend to ever own a gun. But I intend to keep my freedom. I guess I am a "paymaster," nice to meet you.

I don't think any of the points made above would cause wholesale confiscation of guns, yet that is precisely what the NRA and, by implication, its paymasters (the gun manufacturers) argue.

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Permalink Reply by Davo on September 27, 2013 at 6:08pm

I use my right to bare arms everyday whenever it is really hot outside.

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Permalink Reply by Tom Dworzanski on September 27, 2013 at 7:39pm

Lol that reminds me of this tank top a friend of mine was wearing:

Davo said:

I use my right to bare arms everyday whenever it is really hot outside.

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Permalink Reply by Skip Montanaro 0mi on September 27, 2013 at 10:56pm

Mark said:

The only reason that the author can state that gun deaths are on par to surpass car deaths, is because he counts suicides, which make up more than half of gun deaths.

It's not clear to me why you think suicides aren't worth counting.

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Permalink Reply by Reboot Oxnard on September 27, 2013 at 11:24pm

Most suicide attempts do not result in death. Many of these attempts are done in a way that makes rescue possible. Many overdoses, poisonings, and even wrist slashing are often a cry for help. The attempts that are made with a gun, however, are determined. They are not a cry for help. What suggests that a determined suicidal who is deprived of a gun won't find an alternative? Remember, they aren't asking for help, they intend to kill themselves. Are we going to eliminate bikes so that people can't kill themselves by riding in traffic?

Here's the thing about gun control: we've tried it for generations and it has not succeeded. Yeah, England this and Canada that and Moldova something else - it hasn't worked here. Removing the guns has proven to be impossible and there is nothing - nothing - to suggest that anything we can do is going to change that. Criminals are armed and don't give a flying burrito what ineffective feel-good laws we pass in an effort to disarm them. All we have succeeded in doing is disarming the otherwise law-abiding people - it's time for the gun control supporters to admit it didn't work and let's move on.

Skip Montanaro 12mi said:

Mark said:

The only reason that the author can state that gun deaths are on par to surpass car deaths, is because he counts suicides, which make up more than half of gun deaths.

It's not clear to me why you think suicides aren't worth counting.

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Permalink Reply by Skip Montanaro 0mi on September 28, 2013 at 12:08am

Reboot Oxnard said:

Here's the thing about gun control: we've tried it for generations and it has not succeeded.

It's not clear to me that much, if anything has actually been tried. We do all sorts of things to try and insure that driving cars is safe, including user education, licensing and engineering them to improve safety. We do little, if any, of that for guns.

As to the point Mark made about cars being statistically more dangerous than guns, I'm guessing you may have noticed that they are used quite a bit more as well. I'll accept for the moment your belief that suicides don't count because we can perfect our mental health system (yeah, right), and will work with your assertion that there are three times as many traffic deaths as gun deaths. It's probably difficult to make an apples-to-apples comparison about "hours of use," but I will wager dollars to donuts that the time of use of cars in this country is orders of magnitude greater than the time of use of guns. Most adults drive, safely, to work and back every day. Most guns, on the other hand, are rarely used. It's likely that many fewer total hours of gun use contribute to the gun deaths in this country than the total hours of use of cars required to kill the three times as many people as you assert die as traffic fatalities.

Also, consider that while the number of cars per capita and guns per capita are roughly the same, the distribution of the two across the population is almost certainly quite different. There are huge segments of the population where gun ownership is almost nonexistent. There are other segments where multiple gun ownership is common. It's likely that many fewer people and much less actual time of use are responsible for the number of gun deaths than the number of people responsible for traffic deaths.

I will close (and stop following this thread) by relating my own story. My mother committed suicide with a gun when I was 12. Technically, she died of pneumonia when I was 13, but that was because she survived in a coma for a few months. She was a gun owner, as her parents had been. She also suffered from alcoholism and depression, and had been under treatment (such as it existed in the 1960s) various times. Yet, she could, and did, function as a contributing member of society. Consequently, when people suggest that better mental health treatment alone will solve the problem, or that suicides are somehow less important than homicides, I am offended. There was a person and a gun involved in this one isolated incident. To somehow suggest that the only thing that matters is the person, and that we shouldn't try to do anything related to the gun or to the relationship of the gun and its owner (like require training and renewable licensing every now and then) is laughable.

Perhaps we can engineer better mental health treatment, but given that the people who shout the loudest in the public sphere that improving our mental health system will fix the gun death problem are some of the same people who are trying their best to insure that we don't have anything even approximating universal health care, pardon me, but I'm not holding my breath. In my mind, the mental health argument is just a canard, another diversionary tactic designed to keep from honestly considering steps that might help.

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Permalink Reply by Rich S on September 28, 2013 at 2:28am

I agree and sorry to everyone for contributing to the derailment of the discussion.

I work downtown and I've now seen this guy's face enough times that I might be able to recognize him if I see him. Especially if he's carrying around a wheel. If I spot him I'm going to follow him around singing a happy song so he doesn't steal a bike! Won't get too close but make it quite obvious that I'm on to him. Then try to get a cop's attention. Let them do their job.

Drewbacca said: