BICYCLE THEFTS MAKE FOR UNEASY RIDERS

Enthusiasts Have Dark Tales Of Thieves Stalking Cyclists, Scaling
Balconies For Bikes

VANCOUVER -- Barry Gilpin, a fan of high-end bicycles for European
cycling trips, could ride any bike he wanted. In the Lower Mainland,
he chooses to ride a $100 junker because he's certain his bike will be
stolen.

"Vancouver is a very, very bad city for bike theft," said Mr. Gilpin,
owner of Cheapskates stores, which sells 4,000 second-hand bikes on
consignment annually. "It's a big black mark on our city."

Most information about bike theft is anecdotal, but the Vancouver
Police Department alone records $1-million worth of stolen bikes
annually. The department says that's a fraction of the real value
because most owners lack serial numbers or identification and don't
report thefts. No one knows how many parts -- such as handlebars,
seats or wheels -- are pinched from bikes locked outside.

"It sounds like such a silly thing, bike theft," cyclist Bonnie Fenton
said. "People don't think of it as being as serious as car theft. But
it's part of the social question of where we are in our society -- and
the fact is, it's an environmental issue.

"We're trying to encourage people to ride bikes, and cities are
creating bike lanes, but there are barriers, and [bike theft] is one
of them," said Ms. Fenton, the departing chairwoman of a Vancouver
advisory committee on cycling.

A survey by the Vancouver Area Cycling Coalition, which promotes
cycling as environmentally friendly, identified bike theft as one of
the top 10 reasons people refuse to use bicycles to commute to work
and do errands.

Vancouver's bicycle-theft problem has spawned its own urban folklore.
Area Internet lists populate with news about temporary "chop shops"
set up to strip stolen bikes. Bicycle websites post videos of
vigilante-style recoveries of stolen bikes from thieves.

Nearly every local cyclist has a hoary tale about the bike that got
away, or dark stories of rings of thieves in Whistler, North Vancouver
and Kitsilano that follow riders on expensive bicycles home, and
return later to steal the bikes. There are stickers and T-shirts
bearing the slogan "Death to Bike Thieves."

"It's a huge issue," said Arno Schortinghuis, vice-president of the
Vancouver Area Cycling Coalition, which was recently abuzz about a
"chop shop" under the Granville Street Bridge, where thieves allegedly
stripped down bikes for their metal value.

In one local bike-theft story, a bear stars as the hero. Cam McRae,
who runs http://www.nsmb.com for downhill cyclists on the North Shore,
said his own home was hit by a thief. Area cyclists think the thief
follows them home and later steals their downhill bikes, typically
worth $3,000 to $8,000 apiece.

"They got me one night," Mr. McRae said. "They broke the door to my
garage, and then they got scared off" by a local black bear that was
in the backyard.

Another theft victim, Ken Maude, had stored two $7,000 mountain bikes
on the balcony of his third-floor apartment in North Vancouver. One
night in December, he and his wife heard a thump, and the next morning
they discovered the bikes were gone. "There was fresh snow on the
ground and when we looked down, we could see the footprints and tire
marks." A bush was demolished by someone dropping a bike onto it.

The Maudes were lucky: A contact in the biking community eventually
helped them recover their bikes from thieves in Vancouver and
Victoria. But weeks later, Mr. Maude remains shaken that a thief
climbed to his balcony.

In fact, Vancouver Police Department Constable Tim Fanning said,
balconies are bad places to store bikes, as in Vancouver, one bike was
stolen from a seventh floor. "People that have done any rock climbing
at all know it's easy to scale a building," he said.

Constable Fanning, an avid cyclist who uses his $1,800 bike to
commute, advises cyclists to bring their bikes inside their homes and
workplaces. "Don't leave expensive bikes outside, because almost any
lock can be compromised. . . . I will not lock my bike up outside anywhere."

His warnings are sobering. "We have unearthed chop shops. We have
busted a ring stealing bikes, because we caught them shipping a
vanload destined for Edmonton."

One low-rent hotel in Vancouver's Gastown, he said, is notorious for
bike thieves. "Whenever you go into a room there, there's a roomful of
bike parts."

But police can do nothing because they can't identify the bikes'
owners, he said.

In Vancouver, just 5 per cent of bikes reported stolen are ever
recovered, he said. Constable Fanning urges cyclists to engrave or
scratch a driver's licence number onto every valuable bike part, so
police anywhere in the country can track down the owner.

Most bike thefts in Greater Vancouver are thought to be fuelled by
addiction to illegal drugs, and bikes worth $1,000 are often sold "for
$10, to get high on cocaine," Constable Fanning said.

But among a crowd that chuckles about "Death to Bike Thieves"
stickers, some of the solutions proposed by cyclists are surprisingly
sympathetic.

"I'd like to see drug problems not treated as a crime, but as a
medical problem," said Mr. McRae, who supports giving heroin addicts
free prescription drugs. "I'd say 90 per cent of bike theft is fuelled
by . . . drug users. By treating it as a crime, we marginalize these
people."

As a partial solution, the cycling coalition is lobbying
municipalities, businesses and agencies such as TransLink to install
more metal bike lockers such as those now rented by the month at some
SkyTrain stations.

"Almost everybody I talk to has had their bike stolen at one time or
another," Mr. Schortinghuis said. "It prevents people from using their
bike for transportation."

Bike theft also has an emotional cost. "People talk about riding for
the environment et cetera, but I don't think I've ever spoken to
anybody who rides regularly who doesn't love their own bike," said Ms.
Fenton, who has had her bike seat and a wheel stolen off her locked
bike, a red-and-silver job covered in stickers, with a distinctive
coloured front tire that she'd hate to lose.

"It's fun when it spins," she says fondly.

Even when they're caught, bike thieves have few worries when it comes
to paying for their actions. Police in Victoria and Vancouver have
used "bait bikes" -- sting operations where police lock up valuable
bikes and watch them until a thief nabs them -- but the consequences
are minimal.

Constable Fanning said that unless a suspect has a long record of
previous convictions, "theft under $5,000 doesn't carry jail time."