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Stolen Bike? Existing laws HINDER police investigations!

Do you know that existing laws actually HINDER Pgh police investigations of stolen bikes? Nope. Me neither... But, sadly, it's true. Conclusion: The only way to help fight bike thieves is to change the existing laws. Overview: If you report a stolen bicycle to the police—providing the very important serial number—this number gets entered into a digital police report. On the surface, this is good, right?  The problem is that NOBODY can check this number if the bike is being sold by the thief — not bike dealers, not pawn shops, or consumers buying bikes from Craigslist! Sounds pretty dumb. This can't be true, is it?  Well, read the following and decide for yourself. Yesterday, this current inadequate legal framework was confirmed by (the very nice, but equally flummoxed) Detective Sanchioli (City of Pittsburgh Police, Zone 4, Burglary Division). Apparently, and unless the City of Pittsburgh Police are badly mistaken, allowing stolen bicycle serial numbers to be searched by non-police (even registered bike dealers and pawn shops) is currently not possible because it is some kind of "privacy violation" in Pennsylvania. What this means to bicyclists: Any used bike you buy off Craigslist could be stolen. Even a bike shop buying a used bike could be buying a stolen bike—even if these bikes were reported to the police! There is simply no way to know if you don't see a receipt showing proof of purchase. Here's where things get even crazier, illustrating how existing laws actually AID and ENCOURAGE bike thieves. Say your intrepid thief sells the bike to a pawn shop. Existing laws require pawn shops to request and record photo id, name, and address of the seller— AND to file a report that only the police can see. Sounds good so far. However, not only is the pawn shop unable to see serial numbers of stolen bikes reported to the police, pawn shops are not required by law to list the serial number in their report. (What exactly this database looks like, I have no idea since I don't have access. Anecdotally, I was told by a pawn shop that they simply give a basic description of the bike, such as the brand and color.) The pawn shop can then immediately sell the bike (no review or approval by the police is needed or performed). If the buyer pays in cash, there is absolutely no record of who (unwittingly) purchased your stolen bike. If the buyer uses a credit card, you may have a chance of finding a record. So... somehow (with a generous helping of unicorns and rainbows) City Detectives are expected to read and memorize all the reports from pawn shops AND all the police reports. Then something in the pawn shop report is supposed to mentally trigger a match between police reports (with serial numbers) and pawn shop reports (with brand and color). In short, despite having a database and required reporting for pawn shops, there is NO WAY to digitally search for a match, either by the police or by pawn shops. Am I the only one who thinks the lack of digital search capability for serial numbers seems crazy in this day and age? Add to this that in Pittsburgh, there is only ONE detective per zone (of which there are six zones for the entire city) that will be in charge of making this magical connection (depending on whether it was a vehicular theft, or a break-in to your house). Cliff's Notes about My Stolen Bikes: Two very nice mountain bikes were stolen from my LOCKED roof rack (Yay, Thule!) on Christmas Eve, 2015. (Joy to the World, right?). Police were notified and a report was filed, with serial numbers. No recovery, however. Yesterday, a FANTASTIC bicycling friend of mine (whose name I would shout out here, but won't without their approval), FOUND my wife's bike on Craigslist!  Yes, EIGHT months after it was stolen. It was posted by a pawn shop, for sale. I contacted police for instructions and was told to go there and verify it was mine and they would come to retrieve it with me. Luckily, the bike was indeed my wife's (and the serial number matched the police report and my purchase receipt—which is the only way to really know). The police came down and it turns out that the pawn shop did their due-diligence and reported the bike to the police, not once, but twice. No response from the police that this was stolen. They (reasonably) thought the bike was clean. That said, the pawn shop did have records on the seller (who will be issued a warrant for their arrest!), as they were required to do. All legitimate on their end. Sadly,  rather than simply pick up the bike, I had to purchase the bike from them for the amount they paid the thief.... such is the law. (In truth, I was very nervous about how all this would go down, suspecting something shady; however, I ended up very impressed with this pawn shop—and they were nice people, too. Even the police told me these folks were great).  It turns out that the same thief ALSO sold the other stolen bike (mine) to the same pawn shop back in January, a month or less after it was stolen. The pawn shop filed two reports, as is their habit for items that they suspect might have been stolen. No response from the police for that one either. My bike was then sold to someone who paid cash; thus, the pawn shop has no record of the buyer. I will likely never see this bike again, and if I do, some poor sap will have to give up a stolen bike that they thought was legitimately purchased. Summary: the police missed two different opportunities to identify bikes being reported to them by a pawn shop. One was recovered because a friend was on their toes; the other will likely never be recovered now, even though it easily could have been. So, what's a better solution? Good ideas are welcomed here—especially given that the current laws don't seem to help consumers much; and, as in my case, can actually make recovery even harder, if not downright impossible. It seems that the simplest solutions might include: Item 1: The police would have a publicly available website where ANYONE could search for stolen bikes. Enter the serial number and the answer would display "Stolen bicycle" with a button to contact the police, or "No theft reported". This is similar to the website bikeindex.org that consumers can use. https://bikeindex.org/stolen (I register our bikes there, but pawnshops aren't required to search this). Item 2: Allow pawnshops to search the police database of stolen serial numbers, or if Item #1 is done, require pawnshops to use this method. Item 3: Failing either method is to put a little power in the consumer's hand (you know, the person who is highly motivated to find their bikes). Require pawnshops to also search bikeindex.org, in addition to filing their generic report to the police, in case a bike owner has registered their theft on a publicly searchable database. (If any of the above is factually incorrect, I apologize in advance. Please let me know and I'll endeavor to correct it!)            
dirtastic
2016-08-17 09:14:48
thanks for the write up. we've been getting thousands of bike listed in the bike index. in theory, the police are able to use this, but the reality is that the memo does not get around.
erok
2016-08-17 09:35:28
It would be great if there was a better searchable index. But then wondering if the thieves would just take across state lines. Like pgh to Cleveland or morgantown.
edronline
2016-08-17 11:27:17
Crossing state lines could be an issue, but I suspect that most thefts are done locally by unsophisticated rogues looking for quick cash?   However, and most ideally, the police theft serial numbers would be a national searchable index.... or perhaps more easily, the police would be required to post all serial numbers for bike thefts in bikeindex.org? Gotta be an easy and WAY more effective method to identify stolen bikes in this here golden digital age.
dirtastic
2016-08-17 12:41:10
Some pawn shops, apparently, are shipping bikes out of town for sale elsewhere. There was a report here that someone caught people at a shop loading bikes as fast as they could onto a truck. (Unfortunately, they didn't call the police.) I'm in favor of anything that helps police shut down unscrupulous pawn shops and what are, basically, fences for stolen goods. There are some good, honest places like Bicycle Heaven that do a good job of trying to keep from buying stolen bikes. But not everybody is so conscientious.
jonawebb
2016-08-17 12:51:01