Chart: BikePortland. Data: Portland Police Bureau via PSU Criminal Justice Policy Research Institute.
Like most cities in the developed world, Portland is a dramatically more secure place than it was in 1995.
Reported residential burglaries per resident are down 63 percent. Auto theft is down 69 pecent. Gun crime is down 86 percent.
But 20 years of Portland crime statistics collected Wednesday on Portland State University’s website showed that there’s a single glaring exception: bike theft. It’s up 50 percent since 1995.
Officer David Sanders. (Photos by J. Maus/BikePortland)
There’s a strong feeling among many in the community that the Portland Police Bureau simply doesn’t care about bike theft. I hear this sentiment all the time, and I agree that the bureau needs to step up and make this growing problem a higher priority.
In the meantime however, it’s good to know there are some PPB officers going out of their way to battle bike thieves. Officer David Sanders is one of them; but unfortunately he’s doing it inside a bureau that has yet to join him in the fight.
I met Sanders last week at his headquarters office in Old Town.
As he led me into a conference table, I noticed about 8-10 bikes strewn about. They were just the latest batch that Sanders and his partners have taken off the streets and now hope to connect with their owners. Sanders is one of six members of the the downtown Bicycle Patrol Unit (four of which are paid for by Portland Patrol Inc., a private security company that contracts with the PPB), whose job is to keep the peace on the streets. The bulk of his day is responding to low-level disputes and establishing relationships with downtown residents and business owners.
But whenever he can find a few extra minutes, his attention turns to bike theft. [Read more…]
Bike racks at SW 12th and Washington where stolen bikes are frequently locked up. (Photo J. Maus/BikePortland)
Fencing operations for stolen bicycles are currently operating out of two downtown Portland buildings, Lake Oswego police say.
Det. Lee Ferguson said in an interview last week that Lake Oswego police officers tracked a handful of bikes stolen from that city to apartment buildings at SW 10th and Salmon and SW 12th and Washington. He said someone operating out of those buildings consistently purchases bicycles from people who steal them, then locks them at bike racks outside.
A third party then stops by to inspect the bikes, Ferguson said, makes arrangements to purchase them, gets a key from the fence and takes them away. [Read more…]
Tomorrow, Portland’s city council is expected to approve a project (item 234) that’s likely to chart the city’s shift to “Vision Zero,” the philosophy that nothing — not vehicle speed, not road capacity, not even economic productivity — is more important to the transportation system than preventing the serious injury or death of a person on the road.
It’s a provocative idea. But what exactly does it mean the city would do that it doesn’t already do today?
Are you looking for a good deal on a used bike? Did you you get your bike stolen but gave up on finding it or had no way to prove it was yours? You might want to check the listings at GovDeals.com. That’s the online marketplace that has just inked a deal with the Portland Police Bureau to sell unclaimed property.
There are currently 59 items listed for sale and 11 of them are bicycles. Auctions last about a month and bids start at just $10.00.
Among such items as jewelry, art, computers, and tools, there are some pretty high-end bikes available. These bikes were recovered by the PPB but if their rightful owners could not be tracked down, they are now offered up to highest bidder.
Here are a few more of the bikes currently listed…[Read more…]
