What to do if your bike is stolen

So I got a response back from the cycle task force: Here goes...

Hi

Thanks for your E mail.

I fully understand your frustrations. We do work very hard to catch cycle thieves and recover stolen bicycles. We are also the only team in the UK who only investigate the theft of bicycles. The uniformed officers are from another team and have objectives to deal with cycle safety and although will deal with cycle theft their priority is to reduce casualties on the road.

The best method of contacting us is by E mail. However if you believe a crime is happening or about to happen then 999 should be used. Alternatively use 101 for non urgent help and if necessary the enquiry will be passed on to us.

We are aware of Brick Lane and other similar markets and have mounted operations and continue to monitor them. The local Tower Hamlets Safer Transport Team are the officers that routinely operate down there.

We also conduct operations in relation to stolen bikes sold on gumtree and other auction sites on a frequent basis.

There is a UK wide data base for registering bikes and this is described below. I have copied a generic e mail we send to people who have had their bikes stolen which has information that you might find useful.

Sorry to hear about your loss. You should be contacted soon by officers from your local Safer Transport Team to get more information but some of the following generic advice may be useful some of which you may have already done.
1.) Please report the crime in as much detail to your local Police Station in person, telephoning 101 or using the online reporting https://online.met.police.uk/ including the frame number wherever possible and as much detail including modifications and scratches and keep a note of this description.
2.) Please visit the following two websites and register your bike and show it as stolen this will maximize the chances of the bike being return to you if recovered by the Police in the UK. Bike Register
www.bikeregister.com/shop/bikeregister/bike-registration and Immobilise
www.immobilise.com. At the same time register any other bikes in the household and any new ones you purchase in the future.
3.) Send us the details as per point 1 of your bike and ideally a picture and we will circulate it to the team.
4.) Finally keep an eye on this website
www.bikeshd.co.uk collates all the adverts for bicycles for sale placed on websites like Gumtree. Craigslist, Loot and EBay in London. In our experience we normally find adverts are placed within 24hrs and if not keep looking. If you do see your bike let us know and we will see what we can do to return it to you. It might be also worth visiting and making entries on the following forums to maximize the power of 'social media'; Road cc
www.stolen-bikes.co.uk is free and allows you to report your cycle as stolen nationwide, you can set up a tweet to your report including picture and summary and we advise your crime reference number. It also allows you to set up an alert on Findthatbike which like bikeshd collates all the adverts on Ebay, Gumtree and Preloved and will alert you when a cycle matching yours is advertised. We have recovered cycles stolen and sold far and wide via this site.
http://road.cc/forums/roadcc-bike , Bikeradar
http://www.bikeradar.com/forums/ , London Fixed Gear and Single Speed
http://www.lfgss.com/ and finally CycleChat
http://www.cyclechat.net/ .
5.) If you see your bike please contact us on cycletaskforce@met.police.uk and we will see what we can do to help.

Thanks

Jim Morris PS 144ST
Cycle Task Force - STC

Email:- Jim.Morris@met.police.uk Jim.Morris@met.police.uk

Have you marked your cycle? www.met.police.uk/transport/cycle_marking.html