Bike stolen again

So, the Police are patroling at 01:30 and see suspicious activity, but rather than satisfy their professional curiosity by talking with a suspect, they instead opt to see what’s been nicked instead.

Worst episode of Police Interceptors ever!

Glad you got your bike back – if you can’t keep the bike inside any option to maybe take the wheels off and just store the  frame in the house for a while?

Have the cops commented on you recovering your own property?

Did the police get a reg?  That together with the address of the house, together with the garage the bike was recovered from, together with their own witnessing of suspicious behavior and it’s starting to look like they have reasonable evidence to link someone to the theft.  Can they fingerprint the bike, the garage, etc?

I’ll never knock the police as friends/family are/were coppers but as above, what exactly is the point of them in this story? What have they done apart from have a snoop around in the dark and find some broken doors? Unbelievable…

You say the bike ended up in Brum – how far away from you @renton is that? How far did they travel to break into a garage to nick a bike?

great job getting your bike back, shit news that you needed to in the first place.

Even if you used the best locks available they’re only going to slow them down. In your position I’d be looking to make the garage painful to be in, the loudest siren possible inside the garage and protect it with a mesh cage to stop it being smashed and a security smoke generator are the first measures that spring to mind, multiple strobes can be very disorienting too. Make it impossible to stay in the garage when they’re triggered.

If you’re lucky they might leave you alone now you’ve turned up on their doorstep.

Even if you used the best locks available they’re only going to slow them down. In your position I’d be looking to make the garage painful to be in, the loudest siren possible inside the garage

I can’t make the link work, but a Klaxon Masterblaster 127db.

In the shed, out of reach. I used to fit them from time to time in a previous life as an Intruder alarm Technician.

I’d fit a basic wired alarm system with no movement detection, just door contacts and maybe tube and batten/wired doors.

Glad you got the bike back Renton. Only hope is that now they know you know where they live they might be less inclined to try again.

@daveyboywonder they have traveled about 35 miles to come and get it.

@daveyboywonderthey have traveled about 35 miles to come and get it.

Yikes, so hardly opportunistic then. Wonder how they knew about it… and if those scrotes know about it and you’ve been targetted before, how many other scrotes know about the bikes. As others have said, I’d be beefing up security even more (more locks and a far stronger door) and definitely getting an alarm fitted and motion sensing cameras/flood lights etc. Scrotes won’t like being illuminated by millions of lumens of spot light whilst theres alarms going off…

Alternatively, move house.

Mint advert for airtags though…

https://williampowell.com/products/poacher-alarm-ma101

dont click that link on your work pc.  Just been flagged as a restricted category due to ‘weapons’

brilliant thats me on the naughty list

Blimey, well done with the recovery, but ballsy too!  I hope you can come up with a solution to allow you to rest easy but I can imagine it’s unnerving.

I keep my bikes in a garage that is alarmed with the sensor aimed at the bikes. (Plenty of false alarms due to mice,)   The thought (hope) is that however they get in, as soon as they approach the bikes, all hell will break loose and they won’t hang around. The alarm siren is on the house gable end high up so shouldn’t be tampered with and it’s incredibly loud.
This is my strategy as I don’t think I can make a sectional concrete garage intruder proof.
I am a bit paranoid too, so when I have workmen in the house, or even at the neighbours house, I try to trigger an alarm by opening the garage having”forgotten” to disarm it.  Again, stupid logic is that if anyone is scoping the garage or bikes, under false pretences of being a legitimate visitor, they know I have an alarm.

A big sign on the door would also do the trick? Stick a “beware of the dog” up while you’re at it.

https://road.cc/content/news/bike-shop-loses-almost-all-stock-staggering-break-310273

My wife’s somewhat brutal solution to anti-social shit like this is to snip off the little finger starting at the distal phalanx. Nick another one? Nip off the rest.  Had my beloved bike stolen a few years ago. Still miss it. So many memories attached to it.

My bafang converted cove hummer was stolen from outside my mums house (kirkcudbright) back in 2018 and I knew who would have stolen it (local addicts) so I phoned the police and told them but they wouldn’t knock on the door so we waited in the car outside the flats till one of them came out with the bike and as he attempted to ride out of town he fell off breaking his arm and wrist in the process

Alarm you garage with a very very loud alarm so when they return it wakes up the entire neighbourhood and hopefully gets them to run off

Use this sort of alarm, it’s not designed to warn people of a break-in, it is designed to make it totally unbearable for the thief:

Protect With Intolerable Sound Emitters

A Sound Emitter is a device which creates noise so disorientating and unbearable resulting in intruders being physically unable to stay in the premises.

The lady who answered made out like she didn’t have a clue (probably didn’t) and said her lads were good lads and wouldn’t steal anything. To her credit she showed us the outhouse and shed and the bike wasn’t there.

I’m no expert but I don’t think professional thieves keep “stock” where they live, precisely because of the threat of the premises being searched by the police – it’s much harder to prove theft if the stolen items haven’t been recovered.

I suspect that the lady in question knew the craic and was happy to show you the outhouse and shed for that reason. Refusing to let you look would have been of no benefit to her/them, it would have just maintained your suspicions.

Great news that you got your bike back, well done!

Surely the police will now have whoever lives at that address you knocked on on their radar now, if they didn’t already.

LOL at the idea that they aren’t already on first name terms.

Great result. My hunch is the same thieves are unlikely to bother you again, they now know you have pretty decent security, trackers and are willing to pursue them, good work. Thieves are in the main opportunists, it won’t take long before they find an easier target. They can just follow a commuter/weekend rider home who’s riding a nice bike, much easier and less risk. There was a spate of people being followed when leaving Bike Park Wales and in Bristol. The thieves will be operating on a basic mental risk assessment too, they encountered the police, you turned up at their house and they lost their spoils…. So they may conclude there are easier targets to follow instead.

Main thing is to go out and enjoy your bikes, you worked hard to buy them and everyone is entitled to enjoy their purchases. UK really is full of scrotes these days, got much worse with the backlash and rule breaking in Covid, it’s led to a **** you attitude in many and a loss of manners.

Move the  dogs and let them sleep in the garage on an evening.

If there were no police ,the shits would walk into your house steal all your property , rape your family and in general run amok

Trying to bring a morsel of humour to this frightening thread…

Is it too late to make a ‘user name checks out‘ claim on “nippy” from page 1?

Glad OP is riding again and our police are meeting expectations.

(punctuation is not my forte)

Glad our police are living up to

@jamesoz

I’d fit a basic wired alarm system with no movement detection, just door contacts

Is that for budget reasons or are movement sensors not as effective?

@dmorts for false alarm prevention. If you’re going to have a stupidly loud siren, you don’t want it going off in the middle of the night when a spider gets inside a movement detector or a storm sets off a vibration sensor.
Garages and sheds tend to be poor environments for movement detectors.

Tracked them down miles away and probably got them in trouble with their mum, indeed as has been said maybe they’ll think twice in future.

I would now put a large sign up next to the bike saying “I know where you live”

The scrotes had probably been released early from prison earlier that day, courtesy of Kier Stalin…

To add to reeksys suggestion, I would get a picture of their front door made into a big poster with ‘I know where you live’ on it and stick it on the wall by the bikes. Might make them think twice.
If they now know that you know where they live there is a chance they might leave you alone as they know if they nick your bike again the cops will know where to start looking and most thieves pick the easy targets and don’t want to make their own life hard.

great work by the way

We’ve had I think three but maybe four attempts on our shed, after the first one they’ve all failed as I’ve made it progressively harder. More secure locks, beefed up the door and door frame and finally an alarm. The last one set off the alarm and since then nobody has been back, that was a good few years ago now. Hopefully as others have said you’ve made them think again about coming back.

Glad you got your bike back Renton, what an awful experience.

What is the actual point of the police?

Well, according to Marxist theory they’re there to protect the interests and wealth of the ruling class, so bikes aren’t included I’m afraid.

Garages and sheds tend to be poor environments for movement detectors.

Get some smart ones then.
Mine have a delay programmed in. So you need ~5 seconds of sustained movement before it registers. Then you test it with a light (rather than a siren) and see how it goes. Either change the delay or the sensitivity until it works. Then add the siren into the equation.

The latest mmWave sensors can detect multiple items movements as well, which adds some interesting options. Like if it detects one person, take the maglite next to the back door to the garage to see whats going on. If it detects more people, call the cops!

 as he attempted to ride out of town he fell off breaking his arm and wrist in the process

Purely accidental I assume :)

Get some smart ones then.
Mine have a delay programmed in. So you need ~5 seconds of sustained movement before it registers. Then you test it with a light (rather than a siren) and see how it goes. Either change the delay or the sensitivity until it works. Then add the siren into the equation.

The latest mmWave sensors can detect multiple items movements as well, which adds some interesting options. Like if it detects one person, take the maglite next to the back door to the garage to see whats going on. If it detects more people, call the cops!

Things have certainly moved on a bit since I was in the trade, but I’d still go for simple old school vs tech on an outbuilding.

All my bikes are insured. The only bikes I keep in my garage are those I don’t mind getting nicked. Tbh I wouldn’t be heartbroken if some scrotes stole 8k worth of mtbs I haven’t sat on for 2 years and I can’t sell for peanuts

The stuff I want to keep is safely tucked up in the spare room

Good result op. Bigger balls than me knocking on the door of some scumbags house in (presumably) a less than salubrious part of brum accusing them of theft…wouldn’t have been how I’d have played it!!

I’m not condoning this, but I know of a local bike thief who was caught and discovered that a regular sized Kryptonite NY D Lock can easily fit a neck and street sign post inside it and still be locked.

I cannot divulge the names of the 3 (very) angry MTBers how showed him this, but it was on a quiet industrial estate one Friday night over a bank holiday weekend when no one would be around until Tuesday.

Things have certainly moved on a bit since I was in the trade, but I’d still go for simple old school vs tech on an outbuilding.

Some of my smart motion sensors are 10+ year old designs. Is that old school yet ;)

Mine are mostly battery powered as well, so snipping the power to the garage doesn’t actually do much as far as triggering an alarm, except make it dark in there! And good luck spotting something the size of a matchbox on a shelf in the corner in the dark and then working out what it’s for… (If you set the system up properly the mains powered devices will also be flagged up as being powered down when they go out!)

Scary stuff renton.

I too would go with noise and lights as deterrent as much as locks and bricks. Thieves will do anything and be tooled up to cut anything. But a proper noisy alarm, even for a few seconds before it is smashed, will wake you and the dog. As will PIR flood lights.

I had 4 bikes nicked in Sheffield from an outbuilding – they just kicked the door through and cut the cable through the bikes to ground anchor. I fitted a really noisy PIR activated sound alarm on a remote control and PIR activated light high up where it could not be reached. A few months after the 4 bikes were nicked our shed alarm triggered when someone kicked the new door really hard at about 1am…We found footmark on the door, cracked door, but nothing gone.

Purely accidental I assume :)

The police were satisfied as to my explanation, and my brothers (he’s a retained firefighter so knew them when they turned up), shame the judge only gave him 90 days.

He broke into a fishing boat in the town back in 2021 and smeared shit everywhere (why?….just why?) big mistake as the boats are all alarmed now and the skipper really went to town on him.

Stake them out and nick useful things of theirs…. As often as you can ?

if you can’t beat them, join them.

I’m joking but the only way they learn is if something significantly causes them problems, but then of course things escalate and people like that have no filter. However…airgun the car tyres. Every month.

While we are at Kirkcudbright as a seething hotbed of criminal behaviour…. Back in 1997 we had all the energy saving lightbulbs, one staff bike and a waterproof jacket stolen from Barcaple outdoor centre, which being Kirkcudbright in the 1990’s did not have locks on most of the doors.
The local police drove into Kirkcudbright, visited the ‘usual’ flat, which being Kirkcudbright did not have a locked front door, and discovered a box of bulbs on the table and a dripping wet jacket on the door, as the perp had ridden home with his treasure afterwards…Sadly the bike never turned up.