If you want to read local articles about bikes in the Post (and I do) the thing you'll most likely read will go something like this
MANOR HOUSE LANE, 5900 block, 10 p.m. June 13 to 11 a.m. June 15. A bicycle was stolen from a residence entered through an unlocked front door.
because the place where the Post most often mentions bikes is in their crime reports. This is not an indictment of the Post but merely a means of pointing out how common bike theft is. Of course anyone who rides a bike in DC already knows that theft is a problem.
The FBI keeps national crime records, but bicycle theft has always been just one part of the larceny category. They only count it as a bicycle theft (I've been told) if the bicycle was the most expensive thing stolen and they only report on bicycles that were reported stolen. Still in 2004 - the only year I could find bicycle thefts broken out of the larceny category - over 250,000 bicycles were stolen in the US. They count a stolen bicycle's value as $240, so that's $60 million a year.
I wrote about a guy who wanted to put a lo-jack device in a bike and use it to catch thieves, but he had trouble getting the police to cooperate. Here's an article about a guy in Sacramento who did get help.
Back in mid-January, Jason Cecchettini’s girlfriend’s truck was broken into near her Curtis Park home. Unfortunately for the crooks, they picked on the wrong person. Cecchettini was sure that a thief was targeting the neighborhood and that, if tempted, the villain would strike again. With the help of the Sacramento Police Department, he laid a trap.
The next evening, Cecchettini placed a fancy bike, unlocked, on the back of his pickup truck in front of his girlfriend’s house at midnight. By 1:30 a.m., the bike was gone, stolen from the back of the truck.
What the thief didn’t know was that the bike was a special “bait bike” of Cecchettini’s own design. Using radio receivers tuned to the special frequency, the cops were able to pinpoint the exact location of the thief.
a Sacramento Police Department helicopter, equipped with a tracking receiver, was dispatched to hover over the house until patrol cars arrived.
“He was just freaking out. He was probably only home five minutes when the police helicopters moved in,” he said.
“I noticed the bed was pretty lumpy. I pulled back the covers, and there she was.” Apparently, it was the best the thief could do on such short notice. “I guess he didn’t have time to stuff it in the attic,” Cecchettini observed.
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