(Photo © J. Maus)
The New York Times has an amazing report (In a Cyclist-Friendly City, a Black Hole for Bikes – 8/21/08) about a man in Toronto, Canada who was caught with nearly 3,000 stolen bikes in his possession.
According to the report, Igor Kenk was a used bike shop owner (among other things) who was addicted to hoarding bikes. Here are a few choice quotes from the story:
“The jumbled collection of bicycles suggests that Mr. Kenk is the unofficial world champion of bicycle thieves.”
“He’s easily the most hated man in Toronto,” said Alex Jansen, a filmmaker who has been working on a documentary about Mr. Kenk.”
“About 15,000 hopeful cyclists, some teary-eyed, have scoured the Kenk collection in search of their missing bicycles.”
“Ten landlords around the city reported that their garages had been rented by Mr. Kenk and were bulging with bicycles.”
Why would someone steal so many bikes?
The report says an investigator thinks Kenk was “playing the commodities market” and waiting for a spike in scrap metal before melting them down. Kenk himself told a documentary filmmaker that he thinks of himself as, “a crusader against theft and a protector of cast-off bicycles.”
Several people have emailed me the link to this story and wondered if something like this could happen in Portland. Fortunately, to my knowledge no large bike theft ring or Igor Kenk-like efforts have happened here.
Bike theft, while always a threat and a nuisance in Portland, even seems to be on a downward curve. In a recent story published in The Oregonian (Nation-crossing cyclist forges friendships over stolen bike – 8/19/08), Portland Police spokesman Brian Schmautz said that reported thefts are actually down compared to last year (from 741 to 570 through mid-August).
A quick count of entries into the BikePortland/Finetoothcog Stolen Bike Listings (an unresolved technical glitch has prevented listings from showing up on BikePortland since February) reveals 128 thefts in July 2007 and 103 in July 2008.
This apparent decrease in thefts is especially encouraging given that more people are biking these days.
It seems local educational efforts, combined with a growing awareness that cable locks are evil, might be helping. Also figuring into the mix is the tightening of Portland’s secondhand dealer’s ordinance.
Bicycles are on the list of the City’s regulated items and a renewed effort to crackdown on “fenced” property has meant shops that sell used bikes are being more closely watched by the Police Bureau.
Sergeant Troy King is the supervisor of the Police Bureau’s Special Property Investigations (SPI) Unit. He worked closely with bike shop owners last year to make sure the new rules didn’t adversely impact their ability to sell used bikes and to crack down on any shops that were encouraging theft by buying potentially stolen bikes.
Kings says his office reviews “buy tickets” at pawn shops and bike shops and sends out fliers to alert them of stolen property. King also says he’s recovered several bikes thanks to the listings on Finetoothcog and BikePortland.org and that he is eager to work with us to “increase the success of recovering stolen bicycles”.
With a strong community and allies at the Police Bureau looking out for our bikes, I like to think that someone like Igor Kenk could never pull off his tricks in Portland.
Thanks for reading.
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I\’d also argue that there is also a demonstrated link between drugs and bike thieves like Kenk – either because thieves are often trading one for the other or because bikes are such great crimes of opportunity for lower level tweakers and can be turned around so quickly for a $50 hit.
Yes, you get the recreational thieves that\’ll steal and part bikes out on Ebay and so on, but for some reason the big busts on guys like Kenk always seem to involve a drug angle as well.
I think the NYT article mentions this in passing but Igor Kenk *also* got popped with a kilo of blow, a bunch of crack, and pounds of ganja. And in other states I\’ve lived in (mainly AZ) Meth is **always** somehow tied into bike theft hoarders/theives like Kenk, along with tons of other small property theft.
Bumpersticker from Montana I\’ve read about:
\”We Still Hang Bike Thieves in Montana\”
I hope the lock on the door to his new digs is better than the locks he\’s used to.
Where do all the stolen bikes of Portland go ?
Characterize the thiefs ?
Long unanswered questions. Quantitative data
would be nice.
Also I know many people (friends) in PDX that
have purchased \”cheap\” bikes/computers on the street. So in some ways, we ourselves
support the problem. Just like cheap imported goods.
Happy Day !!
RyNO Dan (#3): sounds like a finetoothcog mashup with Google maps might have value?
\”Also I know many people (friends) in PDX that have purchased \”cheap\” bikes/computers on the street.\”
Hmmm, they wouldn\’t be my friends. Weaksauce.
While in Madison Wisconsin recently I was amazed at some similarities and differences to Portland. One thing that stood out to me was the massive amount of people using cable locks. I even took a picture of a carbon road bike locked up with a cable. I wouldn\’t dream of doing that here.
Jonathon, A quick comment on your photo. Stronger locks are not the answer to bike theft anymore than helmets are the solution to bike safety. All locks and or racks are quickly defeatable with the right tool. Give a thief a little prep time and 5 unmonitored minutes, and he will have your bike.
Better facilities and better community are the best solution. (Police that had the resources to give a crap about bike theft would help as well.)
It is interesting that bike theft never reached the the same level of cultural angst, as car theft or even horse theft. We never hanged bike thieves, and there is neither a video game or a law called \”Grand Theft Bicycle\” even though given the value of many stolen every day should be considered felony theft.
Personal choice aside, it\’s pretty obvious strong locks & helmets offer better (but not perfect) protection relative to weak locks & no helmets.
To answer Ryno Dan. I used to work across the street from the old La luna on the short east side. I could swear there was a bike chop shop at that location. i used to see homeless people ( or what appeared to be homeless) taking obviously expensive bikes into a obscure door on that property, only to emerge a few minutes later counting the cash in hand. I called the cops a few times. They seemed to have staked out the property for a few hours each day in marked cop cars. this lasted around two hours a day for two to three days each time i called. As you can imagine, the arrests from this \”sting\” was a little underwhelming.
Everything in moderation, Igor.
Wow, and I thought the Recyclery was bad.
I would also argue that there is also a demonstrated link between, stealing bronze sculptures of a centaur and a snake in battle, and bike thieves like Kenk.
Seriously, where does one find a bronze like that?
This kind of stuff happens where chop shops thrive, in cities where thieves, towing companies and auto repair shops learn how to scam insurance companies and then sell what they have for scrap. Then it grows from there.
Does anyone know why this story broke over a month ago and just no all the news outlets are picking up on it?
here:
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/07/toronto-bike-thief-2000-bikes.php
What is wrong with the Recyclery? Is there something I should know?
Just a little ironic that I had three bikes stolen last night.
My friend recently had her bike returned to her because she kept track of the serial number on her bike and reported the theft to police. I was speechless. I looked for a serial on my bike, but it\’s too cheap, so I took a Dremel and made my own. It\’s better than nothing.
As for bike theft in general, Amsterdam, in addition to all of its lauded qualities, has an epic bike theft problem, and Portland oh-so-wants to be like her. The moral of the story is: Lock your s#*& up.
Gabriel,
The major news outlets in Canada did run with this story at the time … I guess it just wasn\’t that interesting south of the line.
I was wondering why Jonathan was only running it now … I had just presumed that it had blown through while I was on vacation and I simple missed the reference on bike Portland.
Natty
A city that really wants to be \”green\” and encourage human powered transport would change the assignment of it\’s car theft cops to bicycle theft. At the very least, if a car with worse than 20MPG is stolen, ignore the complaint but if a gas sipper is ripped off, follow that up.
Organized and aggressive bike theft is happening in Eugene. If a certain used bike mart were to disappear the problem would too.
Anybody think of picketing said used bike mart? A few dozen cyclists with signs walking up and down on the public sidewalk in front of the joint, signs reading \”Don\’t buy stolen property?\”
Well, there\’s probably no BikePortland.org in Toronto. I would bet that if some cat was filling garages around our city with thousands of bikes, and there was \”word on the street\” about such a character, you\’d probably look into it sooner rather than later.
what about ads like this one ?
http://portland.craigslist.org/mlt/bik/815261922.html