Milne: Bicycle thefts on the rise
The USU Police Department received a call Thursday, Aug. 23 concerning a missing Aggie Blue Bike that belonged to the department of natural resources. Later, a different Aggie Blue Bike — which was registered to the Health and Wellness Center — was found in its place.
“Someone had taken their department of natural resources Aggie Blue Bike and switched it with an older version,” said Capt. Steven Milne of the USU Police department.
David Griffin, the shop manager at Aggie Blue Bikes said they are trying to figure out what happened, but he doesn’t think it was a theft.
“I almost feel like it’s not a theft,” Griffin said. He said there is probably someone who knows what happened with the bikes and that they were switched on purpose, but they aren’t sure what happened yet.
Many bikes are stolen from USU’s campus. Milne said that 29 bikes were reported stolen in 2010 and 33 have been reported stolen so far in 2011. He said many more bikes were probably never reported.
Griffin said that there has been a rise in bike thefts.
“It’s something that is becoming more of a problem,” he said. “I’ve been here over three years, more thefts probably this last year, more people coming in asking if we’ve seen their bike than in the previous two years.”
Milne said students need to lock up their bikes. Most bike thefts, he said, are crimes of opportunity.
“We encourage people to lock their bikes up, use the bike lock. The majority of the ones that are taken were not locked at the time that they were stolen,” Milne said.
Griffin at said students should also be sure to use a quality lock.
“This year lots of them have been locked up. Usually, it’s a cheaper lock and somehow they’ve managed to crack the lock or cut through it. You have to have power tools, in all honestly, to get through a good lock,” Griffin said.
Griffin said there are several ways to lock a bike and some are more effective than others. He said the lock needs to attach the bike frame to the bike rack.
He also said students should lock up anything that has a quick release function.
Milne said that joyriding is also a big problem on campus.
“We’ll find a bike that was shoved in the bushes somewhere. We find out that the owner had never reported it stolen to start with but noticed it had been missing and somebody had used it to ride across campus and then stashed it in the bushes,” Milne said.
Milne also suggested that students register their bikes with the USU Police. He said that way the police will have the bikes description and serial number, and students will receive a tag to put on the bike which helps identify it.
“It’s a free service,” Milne said. “If we come across the bike it’s much easier for us to locate the owner.”
The USU Police gave a presentation to incoming freshmen during their connections class on August 26 in which they gave students some advice on how to prevent bike theft and theft in general.
Sgt. Jessica Elder from the USU Police said that the serial number on most bikes is underneath the bike with the gears and chain. She said other frequently stolen items have serial numbers that will help police find missing and stolen items.
“When you buy these things it’s important to build a file,” she said. Have your paperwork that goes with those items, serial number, model number, things like that,” Elder said.
Some missing items show up in the pawn shop database or on websites like ksl.com, Elder said. Information like make, model and serial number are important if the police are going to retrieve property.
Reported incidents of theft have also gone up this year, Milne said. Eighty-two thefts have been reported so far this year. Seventy-three thefts were reported for the same time period in 2010.
— chris.w.lee@aggiemail.usu.edu