BIKE THEFT DROPS 25%
Vigilantes help turn the tide
It can sometimes feel like there are no safe places to leave a motorcycle these days, no matter how much security you use or where you lock it away. But the figures are actually starting to look much more positive than you might think.
Back in 2017, a decade-high 32,000 motorbikes and scooters were stolen in the UK. This dropped to 27,000 in ’18. Figures suggest that the number will be more like 23,000 by the end of ’19. This is great news, especially at a time when Met Police Commissioner, Cressida Dick, says that detection rates are woefully low and the Home Office reports that only 8.2% of crimes recorded by police in 2018 resulted in a suspect being charged or summonsed to appear in court. Realising that something needed to be done, the Motor Cycle Industry Association, Motorcycle Crime Reduction Group, police, insurance
companies and rider groups all supported by the security marking and tracking companies rallied to improve security and buck the trend.
Police operations up and down the country have been put in place to specifically target bike crime. Perhaps the most controversial of these, the Met’s Operation Venice, saw officers use ‘tactical contact’ to bring pursuits of two-wheelers to a conclusion.
What’s more, civilian operations have made use of social media to locate and recover bikes where forces with stretched budgets don’t have the capacity to act quickly enough.
“There is of course one group who clearly is responsible for engineering this phenomenon and they are the riders themselves,” Dr Ken German, a motorcycle crime expert, told MCN. “They have gathered together both on the road and via social media to create and distribute a network of valuable information and allowed it to be collated, suspect thieves to be discovered, named and arrested for committing all sorts of motorcycle related offences. “Fighting crime can clearly be productive but it requires a partnership of like-minded people to make it happen and if this unique initiative continues to gain momentum bike crime will clearly be reduced.”
‘Detection rates are low, woefully low’ CRESSIDA DICK, MET POLICE