
Frank Szado was only ordering a gelato at Vincenzoโs in Uptown Waterloo when his $6,300 bike, which was inside the store at the time, was stolen. His eyes were only off of it for about two minutes.
โI guess you donโt expect it. [But] it happens. I left it out of my sight; I didnโt have my lock that day, but I did bring it into the store,โ the Waterloo resident of only three years said a couple weeks after his bike had been stolen on May 27.
He has since then reported it stolen to the Waterloo Regional Police Services (WRPS) and put up signs and a Kijiji posting online asking for his bike back.
The postings and signs have a photo of the thief from a security camera at Vincenzoโs.
But his bike hasn’t been returned.
โThis was my dream bike that was stolen,โ Szado continued.ย โI was gambling on the fact that no one was going to take it, my initial thought was that management had moved it.โ
Heat brings the theft
The North Division of WRPS โ a division that monitors parts of student residences near Wilfrid Laurier University โ has recently launched a project on bike theft in the community. According to their initial investigations, the months of April and May saw a 15 per cent increase in the number of bike theft reports compared to the same months in 2012.
โYouโre going to see an increase [in thefts] because more people are out โ itโs cycling season,โ explained Olaf Heinzel, the public affairs coordinator for WRPS.
โItโs the same with any property crime, if itโs valuable to you as the owner, it potentially has value to someone else.โ
He added, โIf more and more people are investing in higher-end bikes, there are people out there who will recognize that and see the opportunity to turn that into cash.โ
WRPS, at the current moment, doesnโt keep a database of registered bicycles because of the high turnover rate that happens with bikes.
Friends sell them to other friends or lend it out to other people very frequently.
While the police are currently investigating Szadoโs stolen bicycle โ they now know the identity of thief โ he also claimed there is a โbike theft ringโ that exists in Waterloo Region. Heinzel, however, noted he is unaware of any ring.
โI donโt know anything about a theft ring. The only ones that Iโm aware of were crimes of opportunity for individuals who saw a bike and decided to run with it,โ Heinzel said. ย ย ย โThat doesnโt suggest that several bikes were taken by the same individual, but Iโm not aware of a ring so to speak.โ
Campuses โ and students โ hit hard
Students who typically use bikes as a main form of transportation are obviously not exempt from bike theft. Both Special Constable Services (SCS) at Laurier and the University of Waterloo (UW) campus police noted that bike theft occurs regularly on each campus.
Director of police services at UW, Dan Anderson, stated that โone to three bikes a dayโ are stolen from the UW campus, and that many others are recovered each week.
Chris Hancocks, the operations manager at SCS Laurier, reiterated the same thing.
โThey steal them from our campus and then go into the region somewhere and they start chopping them up or selling them,โ said Hancocks. โItโs a constant problem through the summer.โ
While he was not on campus when his roommateโs bike โ which was shared with everyone in his house โ was stolen, Matt Guido, a fourth-year business student at Laurier, and his housemates thought they were being proactive by locking their bike to a fence behind their building on Ezra as opposed to in front of it on the bike racks.
โThere was actually a bike rack at the front of the building with five bikes, but we thought it was a bit open,โ Guido explained. โWe just kind of hid it away from the open area.โ
Unfortunately, on one evening in late May, the bikeโs lock was cut and the bike was stolen. โI came back and the lock was on the ground, snipped. The other bikes on the bike rack were actually still there. This one was gone,โ he added.
While the students did not report the bike stolen, Guido has since loaned a bike from one his friend, but this time he stores it in his apartment.
Avoiding theft
Heinzel, Hancocks and Anderson all reiterated the same point when talking about ways to avoid theft: lock up the bike.
But with a lot of bike locks being easily cut, they all noted that buying a better quality lock might be more effective at deterring thieves.
โWeโre seeing an awful lot of the lower end locks being cut,โ said Anderson, noting that students can register their bikes online with UW police. โI would really recommend buying a quality lock for the bikes, especially if your bike is worth a substantial amount of money.โ
Heinzel noted that it would be helpful to WRPS for those who buy a bike to take photos of it, to say receipts and to write down the serial number.
It makes it easier for the WRPS to locate the bike in the situation of a theft.
But Szado isnโt completely convinced. While there shouldnโt be debate over whether or not a bike should be locked, he noted that some people might be able to get around it.
โIf you got a valuable bike, youโve got to lock it, thereโs no question about it,โ Szado said. โ[But] sometimes I donโt think it really matters, from what I see. If someone wants to get your bike, they can. They just cut the locks.โ
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