Another bike stolen.

[Steve Mattson]

This just in from Vigilante Mihai:

Fellow westside riders,

Exciting news.  This email was passed around this morning, LAPD
Pacific Division scooped up a bike thief in the Venice area, there's a
good chance that many bikes stolen from Santa Monica ended up at this
bastard's house.  My understanding is that a large volume of bikes has
moved through this guy's hands, and he may have spraypainted many of
the frames.

If you think yours may be one of them, they mention below that you can
call LAPD Officer Ceja to try and recover your bike.  If you don't
have your serial, at least start writing down specifics of your bike
(brand and model of each bike part) so you have something written you
can present to them in person to try and prove that the bike is yours.

Please feel free to pass this on to anyone else you know that has lost
a bike, especially if it was stolen in West LA or Westwood area.

- Mihai.


___________________

Post this as a message from LAPD Senior Lead Officer Juan Ceja.

He can be reached through the LAPD Pacific Division Community
relations office - Cell Phone # 310-622-3975 or contact the Senior
Lead

Basic Car Coordinator Sergeant Pompano - 310-482-6334

C.W.
___________________

From: Evening of Community [mailto:talksafety@gmail.com]
Sent: Monday, June 01, 2009 4:26 PM
To: Talksafety
Subject: Message from Officer Ceja

Re: Recovered Bicycles

On May 14, 2009 an outside agency conducted a search warrant of a
house and they located several stolen bicycles. The brands vary from
Giant, Trek, Town & Country and Specialized to Connondale and Denali.

If anyone had their bicycle stolen and have the serial number of their
bike or can identify the bicycle by markings on it then please
call me. Thank you.

**** This is why I continue to remind everyone to engrave their names,
made-up code or just write the serial number of your bicycle somewhere
in your wallet so in the event that your bicycle gets stolen, we have
a better chance in recovering it.****

Senior Lead Officer Juan Ceja

[subforry]

I assume most (hopefully all) new u-locks are bic pen cap proof.  It took me about 30 seconds to open an older off-brand u-lock with a bic pen cap.  The point is don't just trust a u-lock because it is a u-lock.

Another item of interest: My sister attended UC Davis, lots of bikes and even more bike theft.  The thieves would pull up with a stake bed truck, cut the chain holding the bike rack, and toss the bike rack and bikes on the truck.

[JB]

"I assume most (hopefully all) new u-locks are bic pen cap proof. "

They are.  If you happen to have a Kryptonite lock with the old cylindrical keys, you can send it back with a check for $18 to Kryptonite and they'll send you a new one.