It’s now been over 10 years and the services has grown to:

• 55,927 stolen bikes listed and 2,603 recorded as recovered
• 5.4 million CheckThatBike queries to registers we supported on the service, resulting in 218,968 frame numbers flagged
• 2.6 million emails sent every year
• 60,000 likes/follows on social media
• Too many media requests to count

All big numbers no doubt but unfortunately it comes at an operational cost that is no longer self sustained by advertising, add to that a need to focus elsewhere, a lack of time and an increase in effort required to keep the service running smoothly and it’s no longer a project that takes the priority it should.

To that end I will be looking at finding a home for both Stolen Bikes UK, Find That Bike and our social media accounts (interested email: john@stolen-bikes.co.uk). This will obviously have to be done in a way mindful of peoples privacy rights and should it end in a transfer of data I will reach out to those affected with an opt-in email.

I will continue to watch this space, I still stand by my premise that Check That Bike! should have been the service that changed how UK handled theft by making it incredibly simple (and free) to check unique frame numbers against any number of databases (be they government or private).

However a lack of interest in police forces both in providing a way to query internal stolen items datasets and/or making it a term in their contract for registers they work with make it unworkable at this time until something happens at a central government level.

It’s been a journey!

John

twitter.com/x41x41x41
linkedin.com/in/mossj

The post The End of the Road appeared first on Stolen Bikes UK.

This puts the total searchable frame numbers from police data on Check That Bike! at 64,000 (24,000 from the met) which easily makes it the largest stolen bike database in the UK, especially when you look at the other services we work with who add to that pool of data.

Over the next couple of days I will be issued FOI requests to bring all the below forces up to date, and for those forces not on this list because they refused on time limit grounds (no automated way to extract the data) we will be issued a request for a very small sample.

The post Metropolitan Police Release Stolen Bike Data appeared first on Stolen Bikes UK.

The Basics

First things, first. Take some screenshots and notes, just encase the advert is taken down.

You reported it to the police originally right? Phone them back using 101, provide your crime reference number and any details about the advert. When you speak to an officer you need to convince them the advert is your bike, if you can’t convince them of this then they won’t waste resources on it. Be aware that officers like anyone else work shifts so you might not get an instant response.

Further steps

Sometimes the police aren’t as helpful as they could be either they say they don’t have the time or they don’t even bother responding what so ever, if that happens we have a few tricks up our sleeves that you can think about..

1. Arrange to buy the bike, make sure it’s a very public place or an address. Once you have this contact the police again and see if they are more helpful…
2. Still no luck? If your city based you can arrange to meet them at a tube/train station (with an open Transport Police station) attached. Around half an hour before your due to meet, go to the station and talk to the officers and see if they are willing to help.
3. Failing that get in touch, john@stolen-bikes.co.uk

Remember!

Never, ever! go to meet a seller without the police. At the end of the day you are dealing with a criminal, people who steal bikes often don’t draw the line there and you could put yourself at risk.

The post I’ve found my bike…. what next? appeared first on Stolen Bikes UK.

The text of our email exchange is below, some details have been removed to protect identities. Essentially Surrey Police failed to connect a found bike to a reported theft even though it was found less than 100 yards from the original crime scene and the owner provided a frame number.

Email

Dear John,

 

I found a condor bike in a hedge a month ago. its worth thousands of pounds and the lock and tool kit were still intact, so it was obviously stolen
I took the bike home for safe keeping and contacted surrey police who refused to collect it. I therefore made a found-property report and was told that the police would check their records and contact me if it was reported lost/stolen.

 

Having  heard nothing for a month, yesterday I went to condors in central London and attempted to trace the owner via the frame number. This was not possible, but they recommended your site.
I looked at your site today and found that the bike had been reported stolen via a local shed burglary the day before I found it and the police had failed to put two and two together (no surprise there”). I contacted the owner via your site today and the good news is that he is coming collect it within the next hour.

 

Well done to your site

 

Regards
REMOVED

———–

Hi <REMOVED>,

 

That’s fantastic, which service did you use and could you give me the frame number?

 

We need results like this to show the police that our services are useful.

 

Kind Regards,
John

Stolen-bikes.co.uk And the frame number was ct071955

 

He was very happy to collect his bike and bought me a good bottle of champagne

 

Surrey police phoned me yesterday to tell me that they had not been able to trace the owner (you couldn’t make it up) I told them that it had been stolen the previous evening 100 yds from where I found it. I even gave her the crime reference number

 

Sent from my iPhone

The post Surrey Police Fail appeared first on Stolen Bikes UK.

This has given us the frame numbers of 40,000 stolen bikes, to put that in perspective the service currently recommended by the Police has 4,296 stolen bikes almost ten times less than we have gathered in the six months since we stopped treating the police with kid gloves.

To keep with our promise to be open and transparent about these things below are the releases we have and we will be keeping this table updated on the Check That Bike! website as we go along.

There are downsides to this method though, we don’t get updates when a bikes recovered but to workaround this we advise people to phone 101 and confirm a stolen bike if there is a match. We also provide guidance on further steps to help people avoid buying a stolen bike, even in the event we can’t find anything suspicious by looking at the frame numbers.

The post 40,000 stolen bikes and counting appeared first on Stolen Bikes UK.

I’m writing this today because I need your support, you see I’m currently campaigning for the police to openly release the frame numbers of stolen bicycles. This would give the public access to the information they need to avoid buying stolen goods and dramatically alter the dynamic that allows the trade in stolen bikes to thrive.

To date 28 police forces have chosen to provide data relating to 40,000 frame numbers and together with property registers and insurers this data forms the country’s largest free to access stolen bike database by a large margin. This has led to over 2,000 suspected stolen bikes being identified through our Check That Bike! service in the first 12 months. Unfortunately despite our success and the fact that other police forces have provided data, the Metropolitan Police have disputed the public benefit to releasing the data and refused to provide the dataneeded by the service to operate effectively in London.

It’s not over yet though, we have the option to appeal the decision with ICO and so we need cycling organisations to provide us with a letter of support that we can utilize to show public support for the release and utilization of this data for the benefit of the cycling community.

If you are a member of a cycling organisation or campaign group and like what we do, please ask them to email a letter of support to us.

Further Reading

• Campaign FAQ
• Release Log
• Brick Lane a stolen bike hub

The post London Based? We need you! appeared first on Stolen Bikes UK.

Most popular brand of bike stolen

I don’t think these statistics are particularly interesting as they don’t account for a brands relative popularity (i.e there are more Specialized bikes out there, so of course more get stolen) but none the less I ran the Metropolitan Police figures against Protect Your Bubble’s and found that indeed Specialized is the number 1 brand in the UK (for both buying a bike and stealing one).

Source: Metropolitan Police Data for Make/Model of Stolen Bikes (via FOI)

What is interesting though is that a whopping 27% of people couldn’t identify the brand of their stolen bike to the police (or it wasn’t recorded).

Average value of a stolen bike

Protect Your Bubble say that “The average cost of a stolen bike was £974.80“, whilst the Home Office reduces that figure down to £337.

Source: Crime in England and Wales Survey, 2013/14

I’d put the difference down to people being more likely to insurer their £1,000 bike.

Type of locations bikes are stolen

Protect Your Bubble say “Of those who claimed for a stolen bicycle, 72% had it stolen from a location other than their home, while 23% had their bicycle stolen from their home.” (not sure what happened to the other 5%).

The Home Office statistics are almost reversed with 68% of bikes being stolen from an owners home, 5% being stolen from a work place, and 27% being stolen from other locations (this adds up to 100%).

Source: Crime in England and Wales Survey, 2013/14

Top five postcodes for bicycle theft

A rather pointless list as it will largely just highlight areas with high bike use but it’s interesting that the insurers data points to London as dominating the top 5, whilst Oxford and Cambridge are clearly a favourite for thieves on the official data. Perhaps this could be put down to the type of person who is likely to buy bicycle insurance.

Source: data.police.uk (based on May 13 to Apr 14)

Top five towns and cities for bicycle theft

Whilst we don’t have a direct comparison for this I do have the data for each police force, which provides a rough guide to how this data changes, again I suspect differences will largely be based on the type of person who insurers their bike.

Source: data.police.uk (based on May 13 to Apr 14)

The post Insurance vs Real Life by the Statistics appeared first on Stolen Bikes UK.

So fed up of constantly explaining why various bits of their arguments are complete bollocks, I’ve decided to simply link them directly to the counter points.

The post Comment Trolls appeared first on Stolen Bikes UK.

There is a way to help police (and members of the public) trace your stolen bike should the worst happen and all it involves is 10 seconds of your time. So what is this magical trick? It’s simply recording your frame number.

This number is near as makes no difference unique to your bike (remember not even DNA can be considered truly unique) and stamped into most bikes underneath the bottom bracket when it’s manufactured.

Despite this very few people take the time to actually bother and last year we asked 600 cyclists why? Well 62% said that they simply hadn’t got round to it with others not believing it would make a difference anyway or simply being unaware of its existence.

Hadn’t got round to it?

If you have the time you can attend a police registration event which involves recording the details on a property register and placing a tamperproof sticker on the bike, some forces (like the Metropolitan Police) do this for free and other forces make a small charge (£8 in the case of Avon & Somerset Police). You can find more information about local registration events by contacting your local force.

This sounds like a lot of effort though and indeed I haven’t attended one of these events. A much quicker and convenient way to record your frame number is simply to take a picture of it (check the quality to make sure it’s clear) and email it to yourself. This way should the worst happen you can dig the number up and pass it to the police and other registers (such as Stolen Bikes UK or Immobilise).

On a side note 95% of respondents said they believe retailers should be recording the number for them and 70% said they would pick a retailer that did this and offered other security advice over one that didn’t. Manufacturers such as Brompton and Bianchi are asking customers to register the frame number through their customer portal which is a huge step in the right direction.

Don’t believe it would make a difference?

Most bikes are mass produced and whilst many people know their own bike from another one like it (via marks or aftermarket parts) others may struggle providing the frame number provides a concrete way to ascertain ownership of a bike for those that don’t know the ins and outs of your personal bike.

There are ways that the frame number could be made more useful and I’m calling for police to release the frame numbers of stolen bikes so developers (such as myself with CheckThatBike!) can build a services that enable both the police and public to check frame numbers against stolen bikes nationally and more importantly comprehensively.

Unaware of existence?

Well know you know. Seriously though with 95% of people suggesting that retailers should record the frame number, I hope in the future more retailers will lead by example and help their customers record this information even if it’s simply printed on the invoice. I recently replaced my bike with one from PlanetX and was pleased to receive a certificate that featured my frame number and information about my bikes build.

Hopefully all of the above has convinced you to grab your bike and make a record of the frame number if you haven’t done so already.

The post 10 seconds to make your bike traceable appeared first on Stolen Bikes UK.

There are a few frequently asked questions so I thought I’d make a post to address them.

I’ll be more than happy to answer any other questions, just ask in the comments below.

The post Check That Bike! Campaign FAQ appeared first on Stolen Bikes UK.