Try to recover a stolen bike? Go to jail!

[slacker]

This story just amazes me. :roll:

Basically, a guy sees his brothers stolen bike, confronts the new "owners", and goes to jail. I'll admit, this Kelly Howe comes off a bit crazy, but why the officer chose not to hold the disputed property is beyond me.

Typically inflexible, the city is refusing to admit fault or drop charges.

http://www.thedailypage.com/daily/artic ... 99de91ce09

excerpt from Isthmus: Daily Page

At a family gathering on July 4, Howe's brother Michael mentioned that his locked Trek 1400 road bike was recently stolen from the parking garage of his apartment. Mike, the former chair of Madison's Commission on People with Disabilities and member of its Equal Opportunities Commission, had reported the theft to Madison police.

Two days later, on July 6 at about 10:30 a.m., Kelley Howe was returning from the grocery store. As he drove past the muffler shop on Park Street, by Fish Hatchery, he saw a young man on a Trek 1400 road bike.

"Oh, that's not Mike's bike," he recalls thinking, discounting the possibility. But he pulled over to get a closer look. When he saw the modified bike components that he'd installed, he knew. It was Mike's bike.

"I took my right hand, put it on the handlebars and said, 'This is a stolen bike. It's my brother's bike, and it was reported stolen.'"

Present were three people, including the young man on the bike and his father. The father insisted he bought the bike from Goodwill for $30. Howe knew this explanation didn't make sense.

For one thing, the bike was worth much more than $30. (His brother reported its value as $900.) And it didn't have a registration sticker (license), which Goodwill makes available at the time of purchase.

Howe says he kept his hand on the bike as the young man tried to pull away. "I did not try to take the bicycle," he stresses. "I was just trying to hold onto it."

This went on for about 10 minutes before a Madison police squad car stopped at the traffic light, a few feet away. Howe called out, then tossed a muffler part from a display rack into the street, to get the officer's attention.

It worked.

Howe says he handed the officer, Erik Dalma, his driver's license, explaining: "This is a stolen bicycle, it belongs to my brother." He says Dalma also conversed, in Spanish, with the three men.

Dalma then placed Howe under arrest. He was handcuffed and driven to the Dane County Jail, fingerprinted and photographed, and held in solitary until the following afternoon.

Some interesting minor points culled from a radio interview today:

-Neither the muffler shop owner nor the man on the bike (who had access to a phone) tried to contact police
-the muffler shop owner corroborated the man on the bikes claim
-The bike locks were found in the muffler shops scrap bin, both had been cut with a grinder
-the men who were in possession of the bike worked at the building the bike was reported stolen from.
-The city has issues with its bike registry program.

Generally to local cops are pretty competent, but they aren't to likely to come clean when they do screw up.

 

[Wildcat]

I sure hope they can afford a good lawyer. They have enough on that muffler shop to own the place.

 

[roadmaster]

first of all, great story. in 92' i had bought a brandnew specialized hardrock mtn bike, my first new bike quality shop bike, and after about a month or so, this lady flags me down as i am riding down the street. the lady claims that i was on her son's new bike that he just has stolen and she wanted the bike back. so as an old habit, i had a copy of purchase recipt from the bike shop i bought it at in my wallet, just for this kinda thing. so even though the lady was tweekin, the recipt with the bikes's ser#, description and my name was indisputable proof the bike was mine and she apologized and left.

if i saw one of my bikes, that had been stolen, with somebody else riding it, it would be hard not to just tackle the person, bike and all to the ground and recover my stolen proporty. i have all the ser#s to every bike ive ever owned and currently own written down in my "bike journal", which also includes my maintnence scheduals and other bicycular related things. if cops want to dispute whos bike it is, hey can take a looksy in my journal and there are my ser#s that i bet the person who stole my bike don't have.

did he ever get back his brothers bike? if i was him, id be "mad about it", and get a laywer.

 

[stretch]

i just build bikes so crazy and one of a kind that no one will steal it, and if they do, good luck trying to ride it. :wink: so if i ever see it again, ill know its mine, take it back, report the guy and get him sent to jail.

 

[user 135]

I hate when common sense does not prevail.

 

[Ed_Straker's_Rat]

I always use my digital camera to take photos of any modifications I do to my bikes along with the serial numbers. It helps to have a good photo when dealing with the cops...

We had probably one of the worst bike thieves in North America arrested in Toronto last year and as far as I know, there are still 1,500+ bikes still unclaimed. I think the main reason is that the original owners had no sales receipts or photos to prove ownership:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/21/world ... 21252.html

 

[Walker]

Double whammy story: During the summer of 1990 I went to Daytona Beach FL upon completion of high school. Work was hard to come by, so one day i was down at unemployment security to fill out paperwork. There was no where to lock my Specialized Rock hopper (with Tange Switchblade forks) so i took off the wheels, used my Kryptonite lock to bundle it all together and leaned it up against the front door (they were open). I kept checking over my shoulder as i waited in line. Of course as soon as my turn came up at the window and i as as far as possible from the doors, somene snatched it. It and ran. Nobody saw anything. After walking home several miles, i find my room mate all bandaged up. Turns out he was victim of a hit and run while riding to work. Of course, because he was running late that day he decided to "borrow" my Bianchi racing bike. Thanks Buddy! Bike was a complete loss. Lost about $ 1,500.00 in bikes that day.

 

[Wildcat]

I also kept the receipt for my bike in my wallet. It's a good thing I did. I bought a used Traveler in 1978 and was later riding it from Tampa to Jacksonville. This was in my younger days when that was possible. It was part adventure, part necessity to ride that far.

I was riding straight through, just stopping to rest and sleep along the way. I got tired of riding after 100 miles, popped the front wheel off, and hitchhiked at a I-75 on ramp heading north. I wanted to make it look like my bike had broken down. A pair of 16 year olds picked me up in a big station wagon. It was very comfortable after 14 hours of riding, but they sure were taveling fast. I think we were doing 90 on the interstate when the cops pulled us over. We were surrounded by 8 police cars and were ordered into the ditch, face down. They had shotguns drawn on us.

Those two kids had stolen that station wagon from an old lady, at gunpoint!


So we were taken to the Ocala police station in cuffs, and kept separated to get the whole story. These cops were mad. I just told them I was riding a bike from Tampa to Jacksonville, and I didn't even have a backpack or anything. They made me dig out the receipt for the bike while I was still handcuffed behind my back. After 4 or 5 hours, I was set free. I resumed riding north and there was the same on ramp I had hitchhiked from.

 

[Uncle Stretch]

Police don't like to deal with bike theft. There is nothing on a police car that will allow you to transport them. You have to put it in the trunk , and then it wont close. Then you have to transport it to the property room. All the time thinking that your spending all this time and trouble to mess with a worthless bike that will be added to a pile of other junk bikes, that nobody will ever recover. By the way most police departments won't let you recover any property without a serial number and a reciept. Your pride and joy will be left in the elements ..rusting away till the next auction. If they make $1000 off of all of them they come out.

 

[demon]

I had a Schwinn Paramount back in 89 with Bullseye hubs and Bullseye gears (red aluminum) so it was easy to identify. I had locked it out in front of the Navy Recruiters office to sign some paperwork and when done it was gone. My friends and I were driving around and I noticed some guy on a bike that looked exactly like mine so we followed him till we could absolutely make sure it was mine. Once I verified it we pulled over ahead of the guy and all of us got out and surrounded him. I told him that if he didn't get off of my bike we were going to inflict some damage to him. He go off and gave me my bike back and he took off running. He looked funny on it too, he was only about 5'5" and I am 6' so the bike was way too big for him. My friends wanted to beat the heck out of him but I was so used to getting bikes stolen that I was just happy to recover it. Sad part of this story is that I don't remember what ever happened to that bike after I joined the Navy.

 

[roadmaster]

so it was mentioned that some if not all police departments (and we have yreka police, siskiyou county sheriffs and CHP all working in my town... yay) require you to have ser# and a recipt to reclaim stolen bikes. easy enough for my two nexts and new huffy cranbrook, but not so easy for any of my really old bikes. do they just take a "note" for that?

 

[Bigcam59]

Here in my neck of the woods we can register our bikes with the local police via the internet. Just got done with the fleet, and printed a copy of the serial numbers to keep in my wallet...just in case.
I've also heard a story about putting a slip of paper inside your tire with your name and phone number and the following note- "If I didn't tell you about this paper, this bike has been STOLEN!" That way maybe if you get ripped off and the thief gets a flat, his local shop will let you know.