Pubdate: Thu, 01 Mar 2007 Source: Globe and Mail (Canada) Copyright: 2007, The Globe and Mail Company Contact: http://www.globeandmail.ca/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/168 Author: Deborah Jones, Special to The Globe and Mail BICYCLE THEFTS MAKE FOR UNEASY RIDERS Enthusiasts Have Dark Tales Of Thieves Stalking Cyclists, Scaling Balconies For Bikes VANCOUVER -- Barry Gilpin, a fan of high-end bicycles for European cycling trips, could ride any bike he wanted. In the Lower Mainland, he chooses to ride a $100 junker because he's certain his bike will be stolen. "Vancouver is a very, very bad city for bike theft," said Mr. Gilpin, owner of Cheapskates stores, which sells 4,000 second-hand bikes on consignment annually. "It's a big black mark on our city." Most information about bike theft is anecdotal, but the Vancouver Police Department alone records $1-million worth of stolen bikes annually. The department says that's a fraction of the real value because most owners lack serial numbers or identification and don't report thefts. No one knows how many parts -- such as handlebars, seats or wheels -- are pinched from bikes locked outside. "It sounds like such a silly thing, bike theft," cyclist Bonnie Fenton said. "People don't think of it as being as serious as car theft. But it's part of the social question of where we are in our society -- and the fact is, it's an environmental issue. "We're trying to encourage people to ride bikes, and cities are creating bike lanes, but there are barriers, and [bike theft] is one of them," said Ms. Fenton, the departing chairwoman of a Vancouver advisory committee on cycling. A survey by the Vancouver Area Cycling Coalition, which promotes cycling as environmentally friendly, identified bike theft as one of the top 10 reasons people refuse to use bicycles to commute to work and do errands. Vancouver's bicycle-theft problem has spawned its own urban folklore. Area Internet lists populate with news about temporary "chop shops" set up to strip stolen bikes. Bicycle websites post videos of vigilante-style recoveries of stolen bikes from thieves. Nearly every local cyclist has a hoary tale about the bike that got away, or dark stories of rings of thieves in Whistler, North Vancouver and Kitsilano that follow riders on expensive bicycles home, and return later to steal the bikes. There are stickers and T-shirts bearing the slogan "Death to Bike Thieves." "It's a huge issue," said Arno Schortinghuis, vice-president of the Vancouver Area Cycling Coalition, which was recently abuzz about a "chop shop" under the Granville Street Bridge, where thieves allegedly stripped down bikes for their metal value. In one local bike-theft story, a bear stars as the hero. Cam McRae, who runs http://www.nsmb.com for downhill cyclists on the North Shore, said his own home was hit by a thief. Area cyclists think the thief follows them home and later steals their downhill bikes, typically worth $3,000 to $8,000 apiece. "They got me one night," Mr. McRae said. "They broke the door to my garage, and then they got scared off" by a local black bear that was in the backyard. Another theft victim, Ken Maude, had stored two $7,000 mountain bikes on the balcony of his third-floor apartment in North Vancouver. One night in December, he and his wife heard a thump, and the next morning they discovered the bikes were gone. "There was fresh snow on the ground and when we looked down, we could see the footprints and tire marks." A bush was demolished by someone dropping a bike onto it. The Maudes were lucky: A contact in the biking community eventually helped them recover their bikes from thieves in Vancouver and Victoria. But weeks later, Mr. Maude remains shaken that a thief climbed to his balcony. In fact, Vancouver Police Department Constable Tim Fanning said, balconies are bad places to store bikes, as in Vancouver, one bike was stolen from a seventh floor. "People that have done any rock climbing at all know it's easy to scale a building," he said. Constable Fanning, an avid cyclist who uses his $1,800 bike to commute, advises cyclists to bring their bikes inside their homes and workplaces. "Don't leave expensive bikes outside, because almost any lock can be compromised. . . . I will not lock my bike up outside anywhere." His warnings are sobering. "We have unearthed chop shops. We have busted a ring stealing bikes, because we caught them shipping a vanload destined for Edmonton." One low-rent hotel in Vancouver's Gastown, he said, is notorious for bike thieves. "Whenever you go into a room there, there's a roomful of bike parts." But police can do nothing because they can't identify the bikes' owners, he said. In Vancouver, just 5 per cent of bikes reported stolen are ever recovered, he said. Constable Fanning urges cyclists to engrave or scratch a driver's licence number onto every valuable bike part, so police anywhere in the country can track down the owner. Most bike thefts in Greater Vancouver are thought to be fuelled by addiction to illegal drugs, and bikes worth $1,000 are often sold "for $10, to get high on cocaine," Constable Fanning said. But among a crowd that chuckles about "Death to Bike Thieves" stickers, some of the solutions proposed by cyclists are surprisingly sympathetic. "I'd like to see drug problems not treated as a crime, but as a medical problem," said Mr. McRae, who supports giving heroin addicts free prescription drugs. "I'd say 90 per cent of bike theft is fuelled by . . . drug users. By treating it as a crime, we marginalize these people." As a partial solution, the cycling coalition is lobbying municipalities, businesses and agencies such as TransLink to install more metal bike lockers such as those now rented by the month at some SkyTrain stations. "Almost everybody I talk to has had their bike stolen at one time or another," Mr. Schortinghuis said. "It prevents people from using their bike for transportation." Bike theft also has an emotional cost. "People talk about riding for the environment et cetera, but I don't think I've ever spoken to anybody who rides regularly who doesn't love their own bike," said Ms. Fenton, who has had her bike seat and a wheel stolen off her locked bike, a red-and-silver job covered in stickers, with a distinctive coloured front tire that she'd hate to lose. "It's fun when it spins," she says fondly. Even when they're caught, bike thieves have few worries when it comes to paying for their actions. Police in Victoria and Vancouver have used "bait bikes" -- sting operations where police lock up valuable bikes and watch them until a thief nabs them -- but the consequences are minimal. Constable Fanning said that unless a suspect has a long record of previous convictions, "theft under $5,000 doesn't carry jail time." - --- MAP posted-by: Derek