The Portland Police Bureau baited someone into stealing a bike and it worked so well they want to do it again.
According to a statement shared this afternoon, the PPB worked with their specialized Bike Squad and Entertainment Detail on a “bait bike crime reduction mission.” They focused the mission in the Downtown core, Old Town, South Park blocks, Couch Park, and Goose Hollow. The mission resulted in three arrests: two for outstanding warrants and one for Theft in the First Degree. In addition, more than 14 grams of cocaine were seized and two vehicles towed.
This mission came in response to one particular bike theft that happened in broad daylight last month on SW 10th Avenue. “While two people acted as lookouts, an individual used a power grinder to cut a lock and steal an e-bike,” the PPB described in the statement. “The bike was equipped with an AirTag and it tracked to North Portland.”
Police are still looking for the suspects and the bike (see below). Anyone who recognizes the individuals is asked to contact crimetips@police.portlandoregon.gov and reference case number 25-183852.
This isn’t the first time the PPB has used trackers to bait a bike. Back in 2017, I reported on a theft in Old Town, and even Washington and Clackamas County Sheriff’s Offices have used bait bikes. It’s unclear whether this time around the PPB used video as part of their mission; but back when they had a Bike Theft Task Force (R.I.P.), using video along with the tracker was considered essential in order to prove to judges that the person they caught with the bike was the same person who initially stole it.
Bike theft remains a problem in Portland. If you want to keep your bike safe, here are a few things to keep in mind.
Thanks for reading.
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Hey, timely; sitting here at Humdinger in Lents and ***portion of comment deleted by moderator – JM *** man walked by with a far too small, I think, OPEN gravel bike. Could be someone other than OPEN. Had asymmetric chain stays, and not sure who all else does that. Had bags. He was walking with one of these guys that has 1000 bags hanging off a wheel chair and kicking along backwards. Where’s a spot to say “hey if your bike is gone, I saw it ^here^”?
lol
By far the biggest barrier to riding for me is concern about my bike being stolen. I’m glad to hear that PPB is actively working to deter bike theft.
Yes, this is a big mental barrier for many and just getting worse now that folks have more expensive ebikes and their batteries. (Batteries alone cost what bikes used to cost for many riders.) It is took bad that local cities invest so heavily in car parking garages but not bike garages.
If your battery is detachable and you can carry or store it that might deter some thieves. Otherwise, a second lock, or lock and chain, could help. A few extra pounds isn’t such a problem for an e bike. I’d also consider parking near ATMs or other known video cameras, and some banks have lobby guards who might be a deterrent even if that’s not their specific job.
It would be great if security guards were specifically trained in the hazards of bike theft and to collect and preserve information on thefts in progress. If you are known to the security guard where you work they might be more proactive in watching your bike. I don’t love it that we have more security guards all the time but they might as well do some good.
I have to believe that bike theft is a deterrent to bike mode share. Combatting theft can be a part of helping advance the region’s goal of more people getting around on bikes
I refuse to buy a nicer bike because I know it, or some part of it, will be stolen in this city. There’s so much low-hanging fruit in terms of crime, I wish we had enough police, or the will of the current police force, to pick them off the street. Of course, without public defenders, they just end up back on the street to steal and deal as usual. So MANY issues related to this, in this state (and city), it’s hard to believe there’s a sunnier side to this storm.
I wish we had a system where people didnt feel like they needed to steal bikes to survive. As long as people are pushed into desperation, they will resort to theft, and no amount of police will stop it from happening.
Making excuses for drug addicts is not helping either.
That’s not strictly accurate. Try going to some countries where theft is actually punished and you’ll see that fear actually works quite well.
Here in a rich country, if they were actually stealing to survive they’d be stealing food. What they are stealing for is to remain dependent on drugs.
Thanks for saying that. I don’t understand the argument that I have to steal something to sell so I can buy something I can steal with more ease and less penalty.
Hey you might be surprised by this, but stolen bikes can be sold, and that money can be used to purchase goods, including food.
I’m guessing that stealing bikes is a ‘business’ for most of the thieves, and that they have the skills and mental acumen to work a ‘real’ job. They just choose not to. I have zero sympathy and wish we could adopt the kind of deterrents used in some countries, e.g. canning I’m serious: moderate corporal punishment is much more effective than ‘catch and release’ and appropriate for low-level criminal behavior.
Singapore is an incredibly safe place to be, the public transportation system is integrated, extensive and clean and it costs a lot to buy a permit to even buy a car.
If people could pull their gaze away from white Europe they would find that other countries have done an excellent job of providing transportation and security for their citizens.
Yes…..I have been there twice and have a friend who is a permanent resident, married to a local. I’m not quite sure why Americans are so appalled by the concept of corporal punishment…I mean, I guess I do understand it….it seems a bit barbaric and inhuman…but, if I compare it to the harm, distress and economic loss that low level crime inflicts on our citizenry AND the dehumanization that a thief must carry, it seems like a cost worth paying….I have been burglarized multiple times in Portland and Eugene, had multiple bikes stolen, three cars stolen, in my 78-year life, and each event was hard to take…I don’t want to dramatize it, but is causes a harm and pain inside me, partially built from violation, and partially from the anger that I feel towards the perp….end of speech.
It’s an amazing place. I was there for 2 weeks as part of an Oregon led military exercise while Oregon hosted the Singaporeans in Hawaii for another 2 years. Time enough to hear about their homeland and then to see it. Beautiful, clean and the thing about canning is it doesn’t have to happen a lot for it to be effective. No littering, trash was piled up on full trash cans during the weekends. There were people stationed in the above ground subways to enforce manners and keeping out of designated areas when embarking or disembarking. “Don’t stand in the marked area” I was yelled at and boy did I move.
Dense housing, lots of tall apartment buildings, very walkable, markets everywhere, a Portland urbanist’s dream. Multipass good for all public transportation and easy to refill. Very multi-cultural, vast variety of things and food to buy, although I couldn’t handle the durian, which the Singaporeans thought was great as more for them.
So next time someone wants to do a “fact finding” trip abroad with tax money to study non-car infrastructure they should try some places like Singapore that we might actually be able to emulate.
You didn’t mention the most important thing about Singapore….The Food!
Oh my yes!
Such variety of plentiful and healthy meats, fish and veggies. And the dreaded Durian of course, LOL . A person really could afford to eat on the street most days/nights and not have to worry about shopping or storing food. In another post there is a discussion on driving for groceries versus walking/biking for groceries and it just shows that those people haven’t been to a place like Singapore where there is great fresh food readily available. Walking around the market area with a plate full of crab in the soft shell with a delightfully spicy, yet not mindlessly burning broth is a treasured memory.
Thanks for the happy culinary flashbacks!!
A lot of what passes for “good behavior” is an avoidance of violence.
We have just about the most generous safety net in the country. They could and do have free food, free housing, free healthcare. Please spare us with the “desperation” trope. At this point, they must like it, the drugs, the lawlessness, the genuine freedom to do whatever they want without consequence. When a place spends $700M a year to deal with them in lieu of better schools, better transit, better police, better emergency services, better healthcare, etc., it becomes unbelievably hard to feel bad.
1000 thumbs up
Obviously we need to provide bicycles to them.
We do. Just not voluntarily.
https://www.oregonlive.com/crime/2025/08/bike-theft-sting-in-downtown-portland-ends-with-3-arrests-cocaine-seized.html
These people seemed real desperate. Cocaine is a necessity.
Your post must be satire or you don’t get out much.
Good job PPB! But I gotta say it is sooo odd that PPB seems to be re-discovering bait bikes {“The Portland Police Bureau baited someone into stealing a bike and it worked so well they want to do it again.”] Has there been that much turn over since 2017 or 2010? Or I guess they don’t read BP. Perhaps an upend rising PPB Bike Recovery officer needs to do a road show at Police conferences.
Battery grinders are such the game changer…thus we need more secure longer term parking…BikeLink lockers or the modern version of Bikestation etc. [Those OHSU staff and PSU students are so lucky.]
We cannot possibly put bike lockers everywhere that people want to lock their bike. I didn’t know what the solution is besides riding a crappy bike.
We don’t need lockers “everywhere that people could possibly want to lock up”, mainly just in places where people might want to lock up overnight or for long periods of time in places with low foot traffic (ex: bike commuters).
Nobody’s rolling up to the farmers market bike parking with a grinder. But I’d 100% want a bike locker at the airport or a workplace.
Also it’s wild how many people can’t get PPB to follow up on or even send an email reply about real bike thefts (esp of air-tagged bikes where they have the literal address their bike is located), but they have time and resources to do this.
A very old game-changer. I used a Dremel tool with a carbide blade to steal a bike 30 year’s ago. It was my bike which I discovered on the mall in Eugene, so I took it. Just as I finished cutting through a pretty good quality U-lock (took me less than a minute and not a single one of dozens of passersby paid me any mind), the new ‘owner’ of my bike showed up screaming ‘he’s stealing my bike’…again nobody even batted an eye. After I convinced him that it was my bike, he admitted that he bought it for $100 (it was a $800 Cannondale touring bike), at his neighbor’s garage sale. His neighbor was the original thief. I end up giving him $50; either that or we could walk over to the police station and sort it out haha
“The bike was equipped with an AirTag and it tracked to North Portland. and the Police are still looking for the bike…”
I’m puzzled by this, wouildn’t the AirTag take you right to the location of the bike?
Might be in an apartment complex.
Definitely not in a camp, because we just can’t assume that bikes in camps are stolen.
That doesn’t make sense. It’s true you can’t assume that bikes in camps are stolen, but that doesn’t mean none are.
Whoosh
I can hear the Portland police haters firing up their laptops….“Isn’t this enforcement going to disproportionately negatively impact POC and LGBTQ+ individuals?”
I can’t imagine we’ll see this continue once our current City Council gets wind of it.
Shouldn’t matter what group someone is a member of, if they break a law they should face the consequences.
Yes, BUT this is Portland where “equity” trumps common sense.
Actually I don’t see anyone saying this.
There’s certainly something funny or ironic about the fact that they used a bait bike and caught a thief, but not the thief that stole the bike, nor the bike itself. The bike is a thing you can stick a GPS tracker to — it could be anything, a wallet, a suitcase, a car. Get it stolen, follow the track to some kind of crime outfit.
So why a bait bike? It’s the truth we all live with: the things that make bikes good also make them easy and useful to steal.
Yep, bikes are one form of very portable street currency, unless you have a bike designed to have less value as parts: like many major bike share bikes. This is long solvable problem: well managed public registration of of bike frames. Plus placing serial numbers on major components. The latter issue we can thank the CPSC and major manufacturers for not doing anything. (For the CPSC it would help in their micro tracking of defective / recalled products.) https://www.cpsc.gov/
That would explain why many of the street bikes I see have the serial numbers ground off.
I lost a bike in 2010 and it was recovered in 2014 in a building a mile away. The basement it was in had something like 150 other stolen bikes, all locked up with cables with the code 00000. The police seemed to have zero interest in figuring out if any of those happened to have a matching police report