I think this week has been particularly bad, but I would estimate that on about 70% of occasions I've been riding on the cycle paths recently I have seen people on bikes which are obviously not theirs, including today when two trips have netted 4 different instances. (one of three bikes including a nice Cannondale (jekyll?) by Craigleith.
I know Police Resources etc etc, but seriously they would only need to stand there for a bit & you'd arrest a perp. It is really frustrating & it feels like it is getting worse.
CityCyclingEdinburgh Forum » General Edinburgh
NEPN & stolen bikes
(57 posts)-
Posted 6 years ago #
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Wow. I need to look out for this more.
Posted 6 years ago # -
bikes which are obviously not theirs
I'm curious..? It's obvious with motorbikes, but bicycles?
Posted 6 years ago # -
This afternoon I saw three youths riding north on the Roseburn path, one of whom was also carrying a grey road bike with green bar tape which was missing a front wheel. I thought it looked a bit odd but may be harmless.
Posted 6 years ago # -
I'm curious..? It's obvious with motorbikes, but bicycles?
Yes, very obvious with bicycles. Why would you ride a £3 grand road bike in a pair of trainers? How many hooded teenagers ride a folding bike with butterfly bars? I would be pefectly happy to be proved wrong by them being stopped by the plod only for it to be shown that they are riding on bikes they have paid for.
Posted 6 years ago # -
You say that but I was behind a chap in Broomhouse with a very expensive looking road bike wearing jeans and a hoody and had similar thoughts to stiltskin he then proceeded to turn into the govt building.
Posted 6 years ago # -
Context is all. It is possible that you happen to be a young man who has saved up all his pennies from his Saturday job to buy an expensive bike & maybe you just can't afford a pair of bibshorts. As I say, I'd be more than happy if the police were out there proving me wrong.
Posted 6 years ago # -
I can spot things like riders being the wrong size for the bike they're riding or people unable to change gear but then there are some people I pass every day doing these. I have no idea how much bikes are worth or what they're made of from the brief glance available when passing in the opposite direction, unless it's something really obvious like a pentagonal-section tube with 'carbon' written on it.
Posted 6 years ago # -
I think we need to be careful making sweeping assumptions about young people based on their clothes or perceived class background. Straying into the territory of the copper asking himself "Why is that black dude driving a Porsche?"
Posted 6 years ago # -
@crowriver
Nailed it.
Posted 6 years ago # -
I'm not a young male person but I'm troubled by the notion I should be wearing some sort of uniform in order to look legit to others.
Posted 6 years ago # -
I do take crowriver's point, but:
Black dude driving a Porsche in central London: not altogether unlikely to be someone with a well paid job in the financial sector driving their own car
Any young guy driving a Porsche in one of London's (or Edinburgh's) more deprived housing estates, irrespective of ethnicity: a possible three-way split between "stolen", "prosperous local entrepreneur (drug dealer, etc)", or "prosperous local entrepreneur (Trotter's Independent Trading)"
So, context counts as well.
Of course we can all wear what we like when cycling (and I'm no particular fan of lycra or cycling tops myself, but for leisure cycling I'll still usually wear cargo pants rather than jeans or baggy jog pants, as these are more practical).
However, I don't think that it would be altogether unreasonable to assume, given that much of the NEPN does pass through many less well-off neighbourhoods in parts, that someone cycling an obviously expensive bike and in clothing substantially inappropriate for riding that sort of bike might seen very incongruous and could attract quite possibly not unwarranted suspicion.
Once upon a time, I was moving flat, and as part of the move I was riding my bikes from the old flat to the new as they were not far apart (riding one, while wheeling the other alongside, along quiet back streets). Part of my route took me throgh part of a university campus, and I was stopped by one of the campus security guards who asked if the bikes were mine. It turned out that, not surprisingly, there were quite a few bike thefts on the campus, so campus security were always keeping a look out for suspicious behaviour.
So, rather than being offended at it being suggested that I might be a thief, I was really quite pleased that they were keeping a watchful look out for this. I think any legitimate bike owner would probably feel the same, knowing that expensive bikes (mine weren't especially, one of them was very second-hand!) are at risk of being stolen, and wouldn't mind a brief questioning (do many people not always hearken back to the more friendly "human" interaction of bobbies on bikes, rather than impersonal patrols from the other side of a police car window), and if the bike rider is not so innocent and it does recover some stolen bikes?
Posted 6 years ago # -
Just had sticks put through my front wheel on the Blackhall Path. Hooded lads heading towards Silverknowes.
Posted 6 years ago # -
Nearly all teenage boys wear hoodies. That doesn't mean all teenage boys are thieves, delinquents etc.
Not all people who live in less prosperous areas are poor; not all poor people indulge in anti-social behaviour, etc.
A black dude driving a Porsche in a less prosperous area is not necessarily:
a) a drug dealer
b) a fenceReally this thread is highlighting how popular prejudices and stereotypes lead to massive assumptions being made about the character of strangers, regardless of the reality.
P.S:- Something weird has happened to the text formatting and layout of this thread. Can whoever messed it up please undo that if possible?
Posted 6 years ago # -
Yeah. I'm sure I saw the Pilton Cycle Club's annual trip to Roseburn.
I take your point about stereotyping, but the fact is those kids could not afford the bikes they were on. Bikes get stolen a lot. Most of those theives are gangs of young, working class males. Put it this way. If those guys were hanging around outside Sainsbury's would you ask them to look after you bike while you poppoed inside? Let's not allow an admirable attitude get in the ways of the real world.
Agree about the formatting. Hope you are ok Rob.Posted 6 years ago # -
"Let's not allow an admirable attitude get in the ways of the real world."
Ah, an appeal to "common sense", the last refuge of....(censored as verging on Rule 2).
Ask yourself this: who earns more, a plumber or a school teacher? A joiner or a civil servant? A self-employed builder or a university lecturer?
The answer of course will be: it depends.
Also ask yourself whether the kids of people with any of these occupations are more or less likely to live in a "less prosperous area", and/or wear hoodies and/or steal bicycles?
Try not to come back with "common sense" stereotypes.
Posted 6 years ago # -
This thread has a weird sidebar that other threads do not have, when I open it on ipad
Posted 6 years ago # -
Yeah I think somehow davecykl might have tweaked it?
Posted 6 years ago # -
slightly hair raising (I took a backup first), but have used some sql superpowers to the list in davecykl post.
Posted 6 years ago # -
I've been thinking about this quite carefully, as it is a thread that causes one to consider one's conscious and unconscious bias.
I think the skin colour/Porsche analogy is flawed because there are no correct clothes or skin colour (or indeed location) for driving a Porsche.
However, if someone has spent £3,000 on a road bike (or mountain bike for that matter), and if that bike has clipless pedals and stuff, then I think it would be highly unlikely that they would ride it regularly in trainers, trackie bottoms and a hoodie. Even if they live in a poor neighbourhood and had saved up their hard-earned pennies to buy the bike of their dreams, I would suggest that they would also have spent some of those pennies on shoes with cleats and 'appropriate' cycle clothing. You don't get one without getting some of the other.
It's exactly the same logic as started the thread: if you own your own motorbike, you will also own a helmet and you won't ride around in a cinched-up hoodie.
So I would argue that, on occasion, there are grounds for stopping some of these people and asking them to account for the ownership of their bike.
Posted 6 years ago # -
"if that bike has clipless pedals and stuff"
Can't recall any mention of that in the original post.
"on occasion, there are grounds for stopping some of these people and asking them to account for the ownership of their bike."
So we're back to the black dude in a Porsche scenario.
How would you feel if someone stopped you and asked for proof of ownership of the bike you were riding?
That's not to say that bike thieves don't exist, nor that it's impossible some young people ride bikes that were not lawfully obtained or were purchased at suspiciously knock down prices.
But some of the assumptions made in this thread, really.
@chrisfl, thanks for fixing the formatting.
Posted 6 years ago # -
Can't recall any mention of that in the original post.
Why would you ride a £3 grand road bike in a pair of trainers?
How would you feel if someone stopped you and asked for proof of ownership of the bike you were riding?
See Davecykl's post
This isn't abou tany working class kid on a bike must've nicked it. It's about the context you see them in. I think your principles are getting in the way of a reasoned argument.Posted 6 years ago # -
@crowriver - like I say, I thought quite carefully about this. Unlike the 'black man in a Porsche' test, I'm not stereotyping people by race, location or apparent wealth, just by the fact that, as I said above, there are very few reasons why someone would legitimately be riding a £3k clipless-equipped bike in trainers and trackie bottoms, but many illegitimate ones,and that is grounds enough for asking the rider to account for themselves. It's the same test as I would want applied to people walking the streets at 3am carrying a jemmy: there are very few reasons they would be doing it legitimately.
...and no, on the very few occasions when I ride my fancy bike in trainers rather than clipless, I wouldn't mind being stopped and asked to account for it.
Posted 6 years ago # -
@greenroofer, carrying a jemmy may fall under the Going Equipped law. That means you can get up to three years for carrying the tools of your trade. Not the actual burglary itself, just carrying the tools. Sidebar - burglary used to be only something that happened at night. It was a lesser offence during the day. I am of course going back a bit. But this condition led to legal definition of night (earlier sunset definition led to spate of twilight burglaries). Night = dark enough not to be able to see our face.
Posted 6 years ago # -
I can think of a precedent for this. In the 90s the Berghaus Mera Peak jacket, designed for mountaineering, was very popular on the football terraces. They would have made an incongruous sight to mountaineers.
Posted 6 years ago # -
I am in general agreement with stiltskin and Greenroofer that sometimes (not every time, of course) some situations can trigger our suspicions, and that sometimes (again, not every time) the suspicions are warranted. I really don't think that any of us have any intention to inappropriately generalise about or speak ill of whole sections of society, but, sometimes, when people actually see some other (real, not hypothetical) people acting in a way that does seem somewhat suspicious, sometimes the reasons for that are genuine.
(It also sounds from later comments that I may unwittingly have managed to mess up the thread formatting, my apologies. I did try to use the formatting buttons to include a list in my post, but it didn't seem to work, and my earlier post didn't appear quite properly. Sorry again if this then somehow messed up subsequent posts as well!)
Posted 6 years ago # -
i am reasonably sure that the dude i saw parking his fairly nice trek bike at tesco's had stolen it. he 'parked' it by shoving it into the bushes. now, i know Trek isn't the highest end bike, but...
his only security measure was his completely flat tires. if you've put your own money into a bike, would you ride like that? (don't recall what he was wearing, but his skin looked rough and he moved like a man who'd finally gotten enough money to buy some oblivion.)
Posted 6 years ago # -
Twice in the last few years my suspicions have been raised by groups of teens on top-end bikes which really don't seem to tally with their age / dress / behaviour. I've got home, checked the helmetcam footage and done a quick search for stolen bikes in Edinburgh and immediately found matches.
The owners & police have been very grateful for the info & footage; if my bike had been stolen I'd be similarly appreciative of anyone checking out their suspicions after they've seen bikes and riders whose mismatch sets their Spidey-senses tingling!
Posted 6 years ago # -
@ThreefromLeith - this seems like a reasonable approach, given it adds some objective evidence beyond people's own judgement about who should be riding a particular bike (and certainly safer than approaching the riders directly).
Posted 6 years ago # -
@sallyhinch are you not perhaps missing the fact that in order to film, search & go to the police tfl has already made a judgement about who should be riding those bikes?
Posted 6 years ago #
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