Downtown bike shop vandalized, bike stolen

Dear bike thief, you suck, please punch yourself in the crotch repeatedly while repeating to yourself “I will never steal again”. Then take the bike back to where it belongs. Did I mention that you suck?

Smash n’ grabs suck!!!

Sorry guys. Don’t put too much time in looking for it and let insurance do what it’s there to do. Of course you have to make a reasonable attempt, I know.

Count your losses and move forward! Don’t let these prick thieves win!

Just to note, we’ve been open since this March and will continue to be open throughout this ordeal.

-Justin Tutor, Owner
Kinetic Performance

Of all these smash and grabs did any of the stores have video monitoring?

Did any of the stores have an alarm?

Did any of the stores have window bars?

If all of the above answers are no, then what exactly did they do to protect their inventory from theft?

Locking the door doesn’t count.

But get ready for an increase in prices as all these stores incur increased insurance costs, if they decide to file a claim.

Lets get a posse together…

@ Anonymous Troll #4 –

Just sayin’, an alarm does nothing for smash n’ grabs. That’s why they are so effective in the first place.

Video monitoring doesn’t provide good results in smash n’ grabs typically either, as the thieves are rarely within good shot of a video for any good length of time so descriptions are rarely of any use.

Troll elsewhere.

Justin (#3), at least you’ve got the right attitude to overcome this setback. Good for you!

PPD doesn’t care about bike theft, but hopefully you’ll be able to recover.

Anonymous (#4), even the best security system is powerless to stop a truly determined thief.

Rather than try to turn a shop into a fortress, I’d rather go after those that are caught with stolen bikes and make examples of them by prosecuting them vigorously and forcing them to experience the consequences of their actions.

But PPD doesn’t care about bike theft, so people will continue to get their stuff ripped off until they do.

It is sad that stealing bicycles is not an offense that has a higher penalty. I was told by one of our police officers that even if they caught a bicycle thief, they would just take him downtown and release him. Apparently it is not worth pursuing given the penalties available. In the old west stealing a horse got you a noose. Now I am not suggesting that we hang bicycle thieves we do need to be tougher on them and on anyone receiving a stolen bicycle. I have heard that bicycles are stolen in one place, loaded into a truck and taken somewhere else to be sold. Maybe bicycle registration everywhere might cut down on this type of activity.

Yes Jack you’re the expert.

Audible alarms do scare people off and do draw others out to become witnesses.

Video monitoring will provide quality visuals if you set it up properly, like facing the unguarded window of your business. The technology has improved greatly in recent years.

But why no response to the question of window bars. Completely effective in this case and can be very unobtrusive.

Call it a troll all you wan,t but I’m sure that their insurance company will be asking the same questions.

Remember you don’t have to have a good lock to protect your bike if the guy next to you doesn’t use a lock at all.

Deterrence is an effective form of property protection.

yup #4, we have an alarm system and video monitoring, which recorded the theft. police responded within minutes to the alarm, by which time the thieves were long gone. we have bars on the back door following an earlier break-in. all but one of our computers were secured by lock (bike lock!). the new one. the one they took.

the video is grainy and the thieves wore hoodies and gloves, no prints.

we’re debating whether to put a steel grate in front. kind of harshes the vibe, and doesn’t protect the glass from simple vandalism.

re insurance: if you make a claim, the tendency is for the premiums to go up such that you end up paying more. that’s right: only if they steal/destroy tens of thousands of dollars worth of stuff does insurance help.

Like I said, Anonymous, troll elsewhere.

I’m a glazier, ok some of the time. Thick, heavy tempered glass is hard as hell to shatter. I’ve taken metal pipes to half inch tempered at full swing and not broken it. Tempered can also flex like crazy as we’ve used a sheet for a spring board.

I’m sure that Anonymous lives in a house with bars on the windows and a state of the art video surveillance system with a super loud alarm…

smash and grab sucks… bars on the window are not the answer…

I like trail user’s idea.

Yes I’ve worked bicycle retail.

Yes we had bars on the windows, just enough that the two times we did have the window broken nothing was stolen because they couldn’t get past the bars. They don’t have to be all that big and obtrusive. Again they act as a deterrent.

The thing we did with bikes that were in the racks was to run a cable through all the frames and lock them to the rack. The bike in the window was secured to a u-bolt in the floor with a cable and lock.

Are you sure you mean tempered glass? That’s the glass used in side and rear windows of cars and shatters into those small fragments.

I prefer laminated glass which it the stuff used for windshields and is a layer of plastic between two layers of glass.

Window bars DO harsh the vibe, but they also make it harder to break in.

An alternative: put the window bars on the INSIDE of the window, where they are not as visible from the street. Still makes it harder without “harshing the vibe” quite as much. Paint the bars to match your interior paint and reduce the neo-industrial look a little.

Theft sucks AND is unpreventable. The best we can do is to deter.

Laminated glass might work as well, though I’ve never heard of anyone using it for security purposes. Integrated glass with a metal mesh is more common and can cut real nasty when someone puts their fist through it.

Tempered glass is the type that shatters into little bits, and automotive glass is really thin compared to storefront glass. Regulations require most storefronts to be tempered to prevent lethal cuts in the event of window breakage. It’s difficult to break tempered on its face but easy if tapped on its side.

Just talked to the boss…he says this film called Shattergard or some other that can be applied to the interior of storefront glass like laminated glass.

Jonathan (#12), I recovered my own stolen bike earlier this year (frame only, the thief had stripped the parts), thanks in part to the Stolen Bike Listings.

Despite turning over the (alleged) thief’s name, address, phone number, etc. to the police department, and following up with their officers over the course of several weeks (and eventually Saltzman’s office – this incident occurred before he was replaced as Police Commissioner), it became clear to me that they had zero interest in helping me prosecute the case. As far as I know, they never even bothered to interview the (alleged) thief.

So while I’m happy to have my frame back, I’ll remain skeptical as to the department’s commitment to seriously going after bike theft in the city.

You flaunt these expensive bikes in store windows in a city with very high unemployment and in the midst of a very bad economy, this is gonna happen. They should get bars on the windows.

Agree #4 is a troll, but a troll with a kernel of a point. I have a bike shop, and I make sure that any bikes you can see from the window are visibly locked up. Wouldn’t stop a determined theif, but hopefully will keep someone from trying a smash and grab (and has so far). If someone is actually thinking it through (not always the case) they will not want to fidget for 5 minutes cutting a lock while the alarm is going off and the cops are on the way.

I agree that bike thiefs suck, as well as anyone who smashes a window. From the looks of it, that’s at least a $1000 window to replace. I worked at a shop once where someone broke a $1200 window to steal a $200 bike. I don’t usually wish harm on anyone, but I do think there would be some kind of poetic justice if one of these folks got cut in half by a big piece of falling window glass.

Ask some pertinent questions, offer up real advice and get called a troll.

Sorry but life isn’t all rainbows and lolly pops.

Retail is a business of cents and any theft cuts deep, particularly in this economy.

Sorry if tough love isn’t appreciated.