Stolen Bike. Known Perpetrator. How to get Police to take some action?

[glenn forger]

Get us a Boardman.

 

[jefmcg]

Get us a Boardman.

They don't know where the boardmans are. @vickster had to chase all over SW London to find a store that actually had the one she was looking for, despite it showing in-stock on the website.

 

[vickster]

They don't know where the boardmans are. @vickster had to chase all over SW London to find a store that actually had the one she was looking for, despite it showing in-stock on the website.

Well I got the second one I ordered!

 

[Tin Pot]

Well (and this is where I can see all the police members nodding sagely) now I see why the police couldn't really be bothered

What I provided the police with was, in addition to the details of the stolen bike, a verified eBay seller history - as a "private seller" listing and selling a volume of brand new cycling accessories, aside from the bicycles from us, 98% of the listings and documented sales were individual lots and all in Halfords inventory. And a not insignificant amount either. Everything was single units, i.e. not a genuine dealer except for small things where stealing a box full of bits would be fairly easy

In addition to this bike, there was a live listing of one of two bikes which were stolen previously (but to my annoyance not reported to police by the store manager, who will now be reporting things like this as he should!!)

Information was cross-referenced to people owning accounts, to the extent that one of the police officers viewing the facebook profile linking a person to a listing address via relationship status, commented that the cat in a facebook picture was "definitely the cat I saw thins morning" when they recovered the main bike.

Anyway, it all pointed to a very regular turnover of stolen sporting and motoring goods and a possible contact inside Halfords as a number of the listed/sold items were high value items secured in cabinets not accessible to the general public. Which is possibly where another name not recognised by me ended up in court..

All that and..

80 hours community service. Painting and decorating work for a builder! Ooooh, that'll show him
£85 victim surcharge and £85 court costs

Still, the bike was recovered and the attempts to steal bicycles seem to have ceased, for now at least

A conviction is a conviction. I'm glad to hear he got his.

Criminals provide their own punishment, crappy lives, worthless careers, etc. Maybe he'll see the value of being useful and change his ways.

 

[keithmac]

My friend had his car stolen years back, we all had a pretty good idea who'd done it and a few days later it turned up outside the thiefs house.

Anyway lad who owned the car went and stood ouside said house and rang the police to tell them he'd found it and to get them to come down so they could deal with it.

The answer was they were too busy to deal with it, and if they caught him driving a car with defective steering (due to lock damage) he would be dealt with accordingly....

 

[Cubist]

My friend had his car stolen years back, we all had a pretty good idea who'd done it and a few days later it turned up outside the thiefs house.

Anyway lad who owned the car went and stood ouside said house and rang the police to tell them he'd found it and to get them to come down so they could deal with it.

The answer was they were too busy to deal with it, and if they caught him driving a car with defective steering (due to lock damage) he would be dealt with accordingly....

Nothing like a good old "bloke in our pub" story!

 

[keithmac]

Search for "blip boy" in York and have a good read..

 

[NorthernDave]

I would have thought high-value stuff going missing from Halfords would get noticed quickly.

Guess you've never ordered anything for Store pickup from them. their stock control is a joke

When I was picking my bike up from my local branch of Halfords a couple of weeks ago, there was an almightly flap on as they'd just realised that earlier in the day someone had walked in, cut the cable securing 2 (or 3, they weren't sure) brand new bikes to the display by the tills and walked out with them...
Then a couple of days later I tried to buy some inner tubes for Mrs ND's bike. None on the shelf, although the till was showing a lots in stock. It seems they have suspicions that a local 'entrepreneur' is running a car boot stall selling their stock, but they haven't been able to catch them, yet.