Photo: YMCA experiencing a “rash” of bike thefts

January 31, 2013 • Posted by: Michael McKisson

The photo above was tweeted to me by Arizona Daily Star reporter Becky Pallack (@beckypallack) who snapped the photo at the downtown YMCA.

Anecdotally it seems like more bikes are being stolen, but I don’t yet have the data to back it up.

What’s interesting though is I’ve had occasion to speak with a lot of UA students about bike theft and often about a third say they didn’t report the theft because they figured nothing would be done.

Scrolling through the stolen bike listing here on the site, many of them don’t have a police report.

The numbers, which I hope to get, may indicate a trend one way or another, but I don’t believe they represent the real impact of bike thefts in Tucson

What do you think?

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5 comments

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Gabrielle

1 Like

Hmm... Interesting. I have been noticing a lot more bicycles for sale on Craiglist by "dealer" in places like Wilcox, Sahuarita, Green Valley and Nogales. The pics are always of bikes up against garages, or what are obviously private backyards. Some are of nice, pretty high-end bikes in somewhat crappy surroundings. I've also seen a few that are listed by "owners". These are different bikes, against the same backgrounds, on different weeks. I did talk about it with our neighborhood liason officer, but did not get any kind of satisfactory answer. Perhaps someone knowledgeable can start combing Craiglist to see if they can find missing bikes there, or see if there is some kind of..I don't know...bike theft ring?

Not trying to do the tin foil cap thing. Its just that some these Craiglist ads strike me as curious.

Red Star

Garage door shots of bikes are ubiquitous, the norm, almost cliche, when selling bikes online...they're everywhere, ebay, craigslist, what. Been that way for a decade+, standard practice and not necessarily indicative of theft or evil.

But yeah, it does kinda look like someone's(s) been working UA and immediate neighborhoods and downtown lately. Difficult to know for sure because UA students don't quite understand data, so they don't report.

Red Star

"What’s interesting though is I’ve had occasion to speak with a lot of UA students about bike theft and often about a third say they didn’t report the theft because they figured nothing would be done.

Scrolling through the stolen bike listing here on the site, many of them don’t have a police report."

The bike theft rate is also pretty high at the really good mass-universities...

Anyway, it's nice to have a UA and neighborhood to preoccupy and absorb the thieves...

3wheeler

The police need to watch some racks where there have been thefts and bust the people doing this. Also, they need to monitor sales of used bikes. I don't advocate jail time for bike theives, they should just get a tatto on their face that says "Bike Thief."

chenley333

I heard from a UA Prof that an entire bike rack by the College of Public Health was cleaned out one evening last week. Just anecdote, but seems credible.