An update!

Today the police are going to talk to the guy (scrote number 2) who the guy selling my stolen bike (scrote number 1) claims he bought it off!

South Yorkshire police say they can’t proceed against scrote number 1 for selling stolen goods as he claimed he bought it in good faith and paid a fair price for it. Given that he was selling it for £250, and had replaced my purple pedals for the Gumtree photo but when seized by the police they were back on… well, excuse me for doubting his innocence. The police won’t do anything until Warwickshire have followed up on scrote number 2. Which they’re finally doing today.

Scrote number 2 happens to be scrote number 1’s brother. It’s a good job they’ve not had nearly two months to concoct a story… Oh, wait.

My bike is still in Sheffield, being held by the police. Warwickshire police keep on saying that they’ll contact South Yorkshire police so I can go and get it, but then don’t.

I feel for you Mrs Toast, things don’t change do they, my initial contact with the police about my stolen bike lead me to conclude that dealing with it myself was a far better option – no hard man tactics, just knew it was worth paying the “fence” £50 to get my £500 uninsured bike back and that’s going back some 20+ years ago.

Update time!

The good news is that I finally have my bike back – today I did the near 200 mile round trip to pick it up from Attercliffe police station. I confess, my heart did drop as I approach the entrance, saw it was dark and had a sign proclaiming that there was no Enquiry Desk any more. Fortunately there was a phone for emergencies/deliveries/people with appointments, and I was eventually reunited with my bike.

It was a bit dirtier, missing its Lizard Skin chainstay protector and Garmin bracket, had a flattish rear tyre and had a couple of new scratches, but was otherwise unscathed. Huzzah!

The bad news is that I’ve just sent off an official complaint about Warwickshire police. As many people on here predicted, the police were both apathetic and useless in investigating the case, despite the fact that I’d given them a pretty good head start by giving them the person who was attempting to sell my stolen bike. Here’s a fun ranty list!

1) The police eventually spoke to scrote number 2 over two months after his brother (scrote number 1) had given his name as the source of the bike. He told the police that he’d bought the bike off a guy selling it on Gumtree for a £100, but met him at the side of the road, but can’t remember who he was, or which number was his, or when it happened. Apparently this is OK, despite the fact that I bought the bike off here over two years ago, and still have the seller’s name, email address and phone number.

2) According to the police, it would cost ‘too much time and money’ to look through his phone log. My bike was stolen on the afternoon of June 3rd, and put on sale the afternoon June 8th. That’s five, six days of calls at most – that’s assuming the possibility that it was nicked, put on Gumtree and sold to scrote number two on June 3rd.

3) I’ve checked the bike adverts on Gumtree via findthatbike.co.uk. If you search for Scott Scale Contessa, there’s no Gumtree adverts nationwide for my particular model for the relevant dates. If you search Scott Scale, the only one of my particular model on sale in the relevant time period is the advert from scrote number one. If you search all bike makes, for £100, in Warwickshire, there’s no advert for my bike. Where is it?

4) Scrote number two told the police that he does a lot of buying bikes to ‘do up’, and apparently he made ‘improvements’ to my bike. This was a lie, unless you count ‘removal of the Lizardskin chainstay protector’, ‘slightly flat rear tyre’, ‘removal of the Garmin Edge bracket’, ‘removal of dust caps; and ‘scratch to the top tube’ as improvements.

5) Scrote number two claims he buys a lot of bikes and sells them on, scrote number one definitely does for a profit. But they don’t keep any records of where the bikes come from, and the police are OK with this. I don’t know if HMRC would be, so I’ve emailed them, just to be on the safe side. 😉

6) I’ve had to battle to get any information out of either police force, with both of them saying the other should be keeping me updated, accusing each other of not responding, saying that they’ll contact me but them not doing so. Literally, the only time I had an officer contact me out of the blue was a PCSO asking me if I’d sorted out the CCTV footage from the office, and without it they couldn’t really do anything (I’d told them that the CCTV cameras didn’t work the day the bike was stolen, and this was two weeks after it had been recovered – she didn’t know).

7) I’ve been without a commuting bike for two months, waiting for the two police forces to get their act together and agree that I can actually get my bike (South Yorkshire had to get the OK from Warwickshire, which took over a month, then I had to talk to the officer that booked in the bike directly – the Warwickshire officer claimed that he wasn’t responding to her emails, 101 SY said he’d call me… when he eventually did, he said he hadn’t had any emails, and hadn’t been told about my numerous calls. :/).

8) As I didn’t have my commuting bike, I was going to work on my scooter. That was also nicked from outside my office. YAY.

So yeah. Not best pleased. I understand that there’s been cuts and everything, but seriously… I handed them the person selling my stolen bike, someone who sells a lot of bikes, and they can’t do anything? Really?

On the plus side, I did get to meet the lovely ton whilst on a northern diversion (as I was up there, I relieved him of an Enduro* for my husband!)

*Not a euphemism

Good work in getting your bike back. Sounds like it’s been a nightmare from start to finish. Not very impressed with the efforts made by the police here at all! 🙁

I did get to meet the lovely ton whilst on a northern diversion (as I was up there, I relieved him

Everyone loves a happy ending!

(Sorry, had to!)

I know it’s small fry to the police but a good job for a small nationwide, deputised team to track down high end jobs. Or maybe just a good idea in my stupid mind.

The thing is, I got my bike back, and even if I hadn’t, I was insured. What bothers me are the poor sods who don’t get their bikes back, and aren’t covered by insurance. The guy was selling another mountain bike just two weeks ago (a GT Avalanche), and he’d put the same crappy pedals on it that he’d put on my bike!