One of our friends from Evomo wrote an interesting post, he was basically struggling between ‘The thin line between biker justice and vigilantism’:
A couple of months ago the shop I ride out of here in PHX, Focus Cyclery had their doors busted in and three high-end Cannondales stolen. One of them showed up a couple weeks later on EBay but was sold too quick and the other two had yet to be found….
As I pull in and swing my car to the air pump I see a Cannondale hard tail chained up to a tree with a cheap cable lock securing it. The wife runs in to get some quarters and I move over out of sight to see the bike. As I get close I see it’s a team edition carbon fiber Taurine.
The rep confirmed that there where only four of those frames in the state so this had to be the stolen one. Now here comes the moral dilemma, do I A) Let it go. B) Call the cops and hope they actually do something about it. Or C) Go vigilantly and “reclaim� the bike for God and Country?
Read the entire post here to see what he did…
So, what would you do? A, B or C?
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If I was able to get some friends with bolt cutters and a truck, I would have freed the bike. The responses at the link saying “the person might not know it’s stolen” I find a bit hard to believe. Anybody riding around on a carbon fiber hardtail knows it’s an expensive bike—-and that they didn’t pay a lot for it.
I liked the double lock and call the owner and cops idea.
D) Called the bike shop about it.
This way you are out of any nasty court stuff or being embarrassed if this rider got the bike out of state, and you leave it up to the bike shop to make the call. You also leave the scene feeling you did the right thing and turned it over to an entity who has the power (and right) to do something about it.
Agree with ^^. Call the cops (as stated, in the hopes they act on it) and call the shop, since they would have the motivation to lean on the cops. Also, I’d snap a shot of it (and the identifying info) as proof.
And I’m still waiting for him to finish the story…
wait for the guy riding it and ask questions first, then use steel pipe on said a$$monkey
Second Jim’s idea!
Everytime I see some dude riding a bike that clearly is way too expensive for him…or its obvious that it may be stolen, I am tempted to ask him if he’d like to sell it for $50….
It would make you wonder if some obvious non-enthusiast type was seen riding around on a Madone or a Fuel. What do you do? Not to sound un-PC, but if I saw an obvious illegal alien day laborer riding a Waterford with a Brooks and Carradice, I’d assume it was stolen. But then what? Call the police? Confront him and get stabbed?
U-lock Justice: http://tinyurl.com/328e8c
Be insured is pretty obvious advice to me. Homeowners and renters insurance will often cover bike theft. On vigilanteism I’m pretty torn. I’d probably just walk away. If it were my stolen bike sitting there or a friend’s I’d intervene, but anything beyond that it starts to get pretty muddy or sketchy.