Missoula Notebook

Yes, Missoula, They Do Steal Bikes

By Sutton Stokes, 8-27-08

	Even the mighty u-lock is not invincible, but at least this method takes some time and makes some noise. Photo by Flickr user viscix.

First in an occasional series.

To all the new faces in town this week, a warm welcome. I know you are busy finding apartments, figuring out class schedules, and selecting the right chocolate lab to go with your Subaru Outback, but there is something we really need to talk about, right away.

It’s your bike.

There are some people in town who want to steal it.

They have a plan, they are already out looking, and your cable lock will barely slow them down.

“Missoula is a great bicycle town,” says Bob Giordano, who should know. Giordano is the executive director of the Missoula Institute for Sustainable Transportation, the parent organization of the build-your-own-free-bike outfit, Free Cycles. “But the baggage that comes with every great bicycle town is that you’re a target for bike theft. We have people stopping by Free Cycles just about every day saying their bike has been stolen.”

According to Captain Gary Taylor of the University of Montana police, this is a problem that peaks on-campus during September and October, when bike thefts occur as much as 400 percent more often than some other months of the year.* And why not? In the confusion of move-in, students may leave bikes unattended; with all the new faces in town, people are less likely to notice a stranger hanging about.

Even so, it can be hard to imagine your bike getting stolen. It’s too old, or it’s not top of the line — who would want it, right?

What you need to understand is how the thieves make their money.

According to Giordano, it’s not unheard of for organized rings to rotate around the northwest, stealing a bunch of bikes in Bozeman, selling them in Missoula; stealing a bunch of bikes in Missoula, selling them in Spokane; and so on.

It’s a volume business, in other words: with a trailer full of bikes, the thief doesn’t have to make his mortgage payment from yours alone, but he’ll sure take another $100 if that’s what he can pawn it for.

“We’re not really seeing thefts of a particular class of bikes,” says Taylor. “We see even low-cost bikes get stolen.”

Obviously, a more expensive bike will net the thief more money — Giordano says he has heard of high-end bikes being stolen from garages and even a second-story balcony, situations where the thief has obviously cased the premises over several days — but the common thread linking most bike thefts is simply security, or the lack thereof.

“A lot of times these are crimes of opportunity where the bike is not secured properly,” observes Taylor, who says about a third of bikes reported stolen to campus police were not locked. “People are just going to run in somewhere for a minute, and when they come back out their bike is gone.”

Even locked bikes aren’t necessarily safe; they really aren’t safe with cable locks, which are designed only to deter, not prevent, theft.  Or, as one commenter on bikeforums.net puts it, a cable lock “is just a sign that says ‘Get Your Free Bike Right Here’.”

Taylor might tend to agree.

“In 2007, we had a lot of cable locks that were just cut,” says Taylor. “You can buy this thing called a cable cutter at any hardware store. It’s shaped just like bolt cutters. It will walk right through half-inch cable just as clean as if you were cutting string with scissors.”

Taylor and Giordano agree that the best kind of lock is the u-shaped style first popularized by Kryptonite.

“I don’t know of any bikes that have been stolen on campus that were locked with a u-lock,” says Taylor.

Of course, there are u-locks and then there are u-locks, says Giordano, who had a lot of problems with some generic $10 u-locks that Free Cycles bought one year. He says $30 will get you a serviceable, dependable lock. If you’re really being careful, you’ll want (1) a case-hardened u-lock (resists hacksaws) in (2) the smallest size that will fit around your rear wheel, the seat tube, and whatever you are locking it to; your goal is to minimize the empty space inside the lock where someone could fit a prying tool or a bottle jack. (There’s some good advice about locking up properly here .)

Then again, here in Missoula, your real goal is just to make your bike slightly less stealable than the nice one on the other side of the rack, which, based on my unscientific observations, isn’t going to be too difficult.

With that in mind, here are some more tips for making your bike less stealable (total security is probably not a realistic goal):

• Don’t leave your bike outside overnight, no matter what kind of lock you are using. Giordano says peak theft hours are between 3 and 5 a.m. If you have to leave your bike outside overnight, use more than one lock.

• Wherever you leave your bike, be smart: look for a spot where a thief would be exposed while he worked, with plenty of light and foot traffic.

• If your bike is equipped with any easily removed extras — lights, panniers, etc. — take them inside with you.

• If you aren’t using the quick-release bolts on your seat and wheels, consider replacing them with an allen bolt.

• Register your bike with the city. It’s required by law, and it also means that your bike’s serial number is recorded (provided you write it down accurately on the form), so that police can actually identify your bike if they find it.

• Or don’t register your bike, whatever. I’m not your mother or a cop. But at least write your serial number down anyway and put it somewhere safe. (Here’s a diagram showing possible locations of bike serial numbers.)

• Keep your bike distinctive. Stickers, torn seats, mismatched parts, odd colors, and that sort of thing all make your bike less attractive to a thief, even if he is going to sell it in another city.

• Finally, consider commuting on a bike you don’t care about, and save the fancy one for the weekend. According to Giordano, old beat-up road bikes almost never get stolen, particularly not when secured with a u-lock.

Well, good luck out there. I’d like to make bike theft a regular feature of the Missoula Notebook, so look for more articles on this subject soon. Feel free to write in/comment with your own hints and experiences.

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*My call to the Missoula City Police Department asking for similar statistics citywide had not been returned by press time, but I’ll be following up with them later.

For more like this, read the rest of the Missoula Notebook.

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