Your Bicycle has been stolen, now what do I do?

 All too often you will see posts on social media from people who have had their bicycles stolen asking people to watch out for it. There are some steps you should take before and in the event of, after.

First take a picture of the bike and one with you in the background and the bike in the foreground. Store them in more than one place; your laptop, the cloud, and your phone. Next locate the frame number on your bike. If you turn the bicycle over and look in the spot where the pedals run through the frame (bottom bracket) you will see a serial number. Take a picture of it and add it to the pictures of the bicycle. This is proof that you own the bike. 

Now fast forward to the future, your bike has been stolen,  you go to the police, and they ask you what your bicycle looks like. Unfortunately your answer is “I don’t know, but it is the best bicycle in the world”. Fortunately you have pictures of the bike so you can provide them with them as part of the report. 

Now for the serial number. The serial number is a unique identifier, so if the police recover your bike they will know who it actually belongs to. 

The next steps you take are very important. First e-mail a copy of the report to every bike shop in town and the suburbs with a picture of the bike. While the thief may not bring the bike into a shop, whoever they sold it to may. As long as the shop has a copy of the police report, including the serial number, they will hold the bike as stolen property.

Another step is to register your bicycle with Bike Index, www.bikeindex.org, this is an on-line bicycle registry that anyone, including bike shops, can access to see if a bicycle has been stolen. One other option is to check Facebook and see if there is a “stolen bikes” page. These pages have crowdsourced bicycle recovery with thousands of members watching for it on the streets, Craigslist, and other online sales sites. In Philadelphia that page is https://www.facebook.com/groups/120319078000282. 

Never post your serial number online, except for Bike Index and the police report you send to the bike shops. Bike thieves know about the social media pages and will watch them to see if their bike has been identified as stolen.

While I hope your bicycle is never stolen, I hope that this will leave you better prepared in the event that it does.