Is it just my town ?

Last year Cambridge had the highest incidence of bicycle theft, Oxford second highest. My granddaughter used to cycle into Oxford to get the bus to school. One of her then 11 Yr old friends found her bicycle had been stolen on her return from school. They used to chain their cycles very securely. My son in law, in Oxford has had two cycles stolen. Both secured in their own garden. The first one was taken by a man who used it to get away quickly after breaking into a nearby house and raping the female occupant. The police found the getaway bike and kept it for a year as evidence. My son in law had to buy a replacement in the interim.

I don't think there's a week passes without bicycles being stolen around here. Last weekend several very expensive bikes were stolen from someone's purposely built outbuilding, even though they were secured by chains and bolted to the wall.

BlueBell
My grandson has one of the named bikes.

There are thefts of catalytic converters here too.

Two of our cars have been broken into remotely since the first lockdown. It looked like they'd tried to hot wire the one car but had been disturbed. Then only a month or so ago there was a pick up truck who was also disturbed parked in front of the 'hot wire' car and the chap said he thought we wanted it taken away It isn't actually worth that much money either but when I spoke the police switchboard they said they are of value in Eastern Europe.

My youngest DGS was surrounded by 4/5 very brave boys all kitted out in the standard North Face uniform and took his bike from him before blacking his eye in the process,he used his bike for college & work placement something these thugs would not know anything about.
The Police showed no interest they said if his brothers found the culprits they would be arrested if they used force to get the bike back from them they too rode around the area for a short while.

MerylStreep, my son cycles to the station. He had two good bikes stolen, (despite strong locks) in quick succession.

He spray painted his next new one, matt black all over (including the chrome parts) to deter thieves. He still has that one!

The police are ‘too busy’ nowadays for this ‘low level crime’. Report it and just get given a crime number to pass onto an insurance company. It’s a sad state of affairs isn’t it? Yet we see the police have plenty of time to knock on doors when it comes to following up on perceived hate crime or for taking the knee at community events etc.

Just off subject but around 3 months ago, scumbags jacked my car up cut off the expensive part of exhaust(CATALYTIC). right under the nose of a member of staff, she thought they were mending it!! Going back to cycles,I think it's pretty much same all over, some scroats are just opotunist others travel round in gangs, typical wagon with sides up.
They usually take anything with engine on lawnmowers etc some of these are then made into motorised toys, scooter, trikes etc for their kids to ride around the streets.
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Like op my gs saved money up for a much wanted orange bmx, he had it around months before the scroats just took it off him and taunted him by riding past him on it.

These are not the odd bike though it’s two or three every day
Calendargirl and they all seem to be a few very expensive makes (my alsoran has never been touched ?) and they cut through locks… often they are kids only way of getting to school and college and often for work too

Our son’s bike was stolen when he was at Scouts. This was over 30 years ago, it was bought with hard-earned money from his paper round. I was absolutely livid, it wasn’t insured, in our peaceful little market town it was a shocking incident ( to me, anyway).

My rose-tinted specs need a polish nowadays.

Its interesting to hear there are others having this problem well no it’s disgusting but everyone seems to think it only happens in my town and I just wanted to get a feel for whether it’s a much wider problem which is what I thought
it would be
I don’t think it’s a more people cycling in lockdown problem as there are only certain makes going and bolt cutters are used to go through the locks so it’s not just a ‘I need a bike to pop out on’ crime I can imagine someone with a van or lorry just going round grabbing them to order and selling them on as soon as
Blooming awful though the police don’t seem interested or maybe just don’t have the time or manpower

BlueBell
Here in Southend you can’t even go out on a good bike. The scroats will have it off you. My grandson hasn’t been out on his bike without his parents for over a year.

it was dreadful here and i think the bloke who they found with them all broke the world record

We seem to get spates of it - more during dark evenings.
The council pick up a lot that are dumped and if they have not been claimed the public can buy them cheaply.

I read somewhere that they’ve increased during lockdown as more people have taken up cycling.