14,000 in two years... the great bike robbery!

MORE than 14,000 bicycles have been stolen since 2016, it has emerged.

The true figure, however, is likely to be even higher as thefts rose by 7.5% last year, according to Crime Prevention Officer Sergeant Tony Davis who launched An Garda Síochána’s ‘Lock It or Lose It’ campaign yesterday.

Sgt Davis, speaking to the Irish Daily Mail, said: ‘The real figure is way more than [14,112].

‘How we know, is that we recover hundreds of hundreds of bikes and we cannot find the owners, which is a shame really.

‘It is hard to determine the under-reporting of crime, but cerwithout tainly this is one of the areas that is under-reported,’ he added.

With each bike worth on average €510, that equates to €7.1million of stolen property since 2016.

According to Sgt Davis, the trend for not reporting theft of bikes to gardaí makes it difficult to reunite any recovered bikes with their owners.

He also said that after a period of time when all avenues to reunite a stolen bike with the owner have been exhausted, a court order will be issued to allow bikes to be sold at public auction.

Sgt Davis stressed the importance of reporting bike thefts as, a report, gardaí are unable to formulate a charge against an individual.

He added that bike theft has led to many people coming before the courts charged with the crime.

The Crime Prevention Officer pointed to a Garda report which found bike thefts were 7.5% higher in 2017 but are down in 2018 as a result of a drop in reported thefts.

The report found that cities such as Dublin, Cork, Limerick, and Galway make up 83% of all bike thefts, while 52% of bike thefts are stolen on public streets and 32% from homes.

In Dublin alone, a little under 10,000 bikes have been stolen since 2016.

The most common time for a bike to be stolen is between 8am and 5pm, with Friday being statistically the most common day for bikes to be stolen. Sgt Davis pointed to the high number of thefts reported from private homes, where bicycles are often stored in unsecured sheds.

‘One third of all those bikes were stolen from a house or a shed,’ he said. ‘In my thinking that is probably a garden shed. So you have a nice bike, you put it into the shed but you never lock the shed or you don’t think of locking the bike when it is in the shed.’

Sgt Davis said that the point of the campaign is to get people to take extra precautions to try to

In Dublin, 10,000 bikes were stolen

keep their bikes safe. An Garda Síochána is advising cyclists to spend up to 20% of the value of the bike on two locks, secure it to an immovable object, take a picture of the bike’s serial number and keep it safe.

Bikes should also be locked indoors or in well-lit areas, if possible. The bike serial number is important as it enables gardaí to input it into a computer system when it is reported stolen, and for bikes recovered by gardaí to be returned to their owners.