Cargo Bikes

^^^^ Sorry to hear about the theft, J.

This forum constantly leaves me under the impression that theft in London (rest of UK?) seems out of control (from a distance on the internet). Sorry your cargo bike was stolen that's just terrible.

As ever, it's the result of quite deliberate choices, i.e. neglecting the issue. I've done quite a lot of work on bike theft, although not recently, and there was always fitful progress that was soon cancelled, and things returned to 'normal'.

The Metropolitan Police, as an institution, have never been interested in policing bike theft properly, and it was only down to activists to get them to take it seriously--for a time, but not for long. Rank-and-file officers have often been very willing to work on it, because many know that bike theft is an entry-level crime and prevention is key, but it's just not something that management generally supports.

There was an activist in Tower Hamlets who worked with police on Brick Lane Market and managed to drive the 'trade' in stolen bikes away almost entirely--then the officer he worked with left that police station and stolen bikes returned to the market very quickly. (This was long before Internet sites like Gumtree, when much of the 'trade' in stolen bikes was still via markets.) The London Cycling Campaign got the Met Police to form the Cycle Task Force for a few years, supported by TfL, and that, too, did successful work, including taking quite a few cases to court, although it's very difficult to secure a conviction of a bike thief, and when they're out of prison they'll usually just resume what they were doing before. The CTF was also assigned to a couple of other things that didn't have anything to do with bike theft, and was eventually disbanded. In the London Borough of Hackney, two officers took the initiative to form the short-lived Cycle Crime Unit, which had some successes but was again disbanded very quickly, because the borough apparently had other priorities.

Thieves know all this, of course, and the vast majority of the time, there's no enforcement and they don't get caught. Of the different types of theft, you sometimes hear that this and that branch of the police have recovered a 'hoard' of bikes, usually from a terraced house or a flat, and those are often combined with other stolen goods the people there were handling, but as far as I know the really organised people haven't been touched, i.e. those who probably have warehousing somewhere and move bikes between cities and countries (probably a lot harder now 'thanks' to 'Brexit').

It's abundantly clear that when there are resources devoted to it, they give a good return, but constantly chopping, changing, and cancelling them is ineffective nonsense, as experience over the last twenty years have shown, and I have no doubt that very similar initiatives were attempted and shut down further in the past, too.

Overall, if you do certain things right, it's very unlikely that your bike will get stolen, but with things like cargo bikes, for instance, it's very hard to prevent theft (and I'm sure jdmitch did everything right). If an expensive bike is always parked in the same place, e.g. under a tarp in a front garden because it won't go in the house, and thieves have time to case the situation and plan when to go for it, they will.

E-bikes have further increased the appeal of stealing bikes, because their re-sale value is obviously higher.