So today at a petrol station in the east end of Glasgow I saw a dishevelled looking old guy (50’s), bit of a limp / shuffle and who looked like they may have been homeless judging by his appearance. What caught my attention was the fact he was wheeling a brand new Cube full suspension bike. He limped / shuffled it over to the water/air hose station and proceeded to pour water on it as I filled up my car. He didn’t have gloves, helmet, backpack or anything that I would expect someone who spend decent money on a bike to have, in fact he walked it out of the petrol station.

Obviously it could be innocent and he’s saved up for the bike, but given the amount of bike thefts, I suspect he has came by this by illicit means. Don’t think there’s much I could have down so thought I would post up here in case anyone is missing a black Cube full suss 29er bike.

Who will do exactly what with that information?

Not much use now is it? Would have been more useful to contact the police when there was half a chance of something getting done about it.

Possibly even just shouting ‘oi that’s my bike!’ might have caused him to limp/shuffle off at speed and you could have taken it to the police station.

Indeed why not challenge him it does not seem like they could have posed much threat to you

Ah, hindsight. I’m sure the OP will be able to hop in his TARDIS and pop back to do the right thing.

May be worth bouncing it to the police who will be able to access the CCTV footage.

Nip into Easterhouse Police station and let them know. If it’s innocent they won’t mind. If not they can add it to intelligence.

and while we are at it – Database, UV and microdot kits available here for 30 quid. – http://www.bikeregister.com

i would have hoped STW had enough of reach that if someone confirmed their bike had been stolen in the past few weeks there is now a potential location that people could keep an eye on. Yes maybe I should have engaged him in chat then made a more informed decision on what I did next based on what he said.

I’m regretting not doing that hence the post on here because it’s gnawing away at me.

To be clear he wheeled the bike into the station, I didn’t see him take it from anywhere.

It was a mile along from London road police station. I’ll give them a call tomorrow.

Anything like this?

http://www.bikeradar.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=10040&t=13034869

suburbanreuben – Member
Anything like this?

…and after 6 months it probably needed a wash to make it look something like this

No, more like a Cube stereo 140

So even if you get cctv from the petrol station, you think you can interest the police in a stolen bike, in Glasgow?

The police are like any shitty company with a government given monopoly these days. (Think railways) You can’t dispute the charges (in our council tax) but you can expect to be fobbed of with any crime less than murder or hate/internet name calling.

My bike got nicked, from right under a cctv camera, in full daylight. I couldn’t even get the police to bother asking the council for the footage, let alone find a couple of minutes of fast forward rewind action to see if they could at least identify the thief. Same when my motorbike was in a “hit and run”, again right under a recording cctv camera, where all they did was issue me with a producer, or my phone which was pickpocketed on a bus. I could track it’s theft on the net, and could have identifed the thief. I even toldthem where and when they’d find him and how to identify him, and did they do anything?

If you do the spadework yourself, they just get arsy you have shown how easy much of their work really is, if only they could be bothered. And if you can’t do the spadework, they assume you won’t know just how much crime they could clear up if they could be arsed, and fob you off anyway. And couple of these examples are pre budget cuts.

Most hilariously, when my car was stolen, they refused to give me the identity of the thief, citing DPA. (They lied to me over this, they were obliged to give it to me for a civil action). They also suggested, assigning an arbitary value to it, that it was “low value” and thus unimportant to them, and essentially, that if the thief had it, there was nothing they could do. No back story about finance or keepers, a salvage agent just towed it away as they fancied it. And the agent said “someone, whos name he couldn’t remember, who’s number he didn’t keep, and who’s address he never had, who he didn’t actually meet and who didn’t have any paperwork, just said he could have my car!” And the police couldn’t find any holes in that story. That was for a £3k MX5, so your chances of interesting plod in a kids pushbike is the square root of sod all.

Only significant use the police have these days is to dish out crime references for the insurance industry. If only there was an alternative….. I’d actually pay for a private police service if I had the option, as I think uselessness is actually culturally built in. They have such power and lack of accountability, they don’t need to be very good at their jobs, and as a “public servant” expect a level of respect they gave up the right to years ago.

And the saddest thing. I know several police officers. I am sure that apart from the planks I’ve dealt with, the overall ability and honesty of the police has never been higher. But the management appears broken from end to end.

Rant over. Sorry about the lack of swearing, caps lock, and excessive use of punctuation, it’s a pretty poor effort to be honest.

How do you know a family member didn’t leave it him before they passed away? This making him depressed and disheveled looking? Washing it would mean to me he wants to look after it and not take to a garage cctvd up to death