a crimeless victim

people may talk about victimless crime, but right now i feel just the opposite, as if i am a crimeless victim

last week i had my bike stolen, within minutes of locking it up outside B&Q and picking up what i needed, i returned to find that my bike was no longer where i left it, in fact there was no sign of it at all



a couple of kids that were near the entrance of B&Q confirmed it for me (as if it could have been anything else), that someone had quite casually come along, cut through my lock as if it was butter and then hopped on my bike and rode off

further fuel to the fire, if someone was gonna make off with my bike i do wish that they'd have had to work a bit harder for it

thankfully it was directly underneath a security camera so there should at least be a decent image of the culprit.... but of course, that camera was not recording

yes, this was the kind of day i was having...


i knew anything that follows would be rather pointless, only if i'd had my bike microchipped and satelite traced would i have a hope in hell of it turning up again

as a kid we'd had mine and my brothers bikes stolen from our garden, they'd been security marked by the police at an open day at our primary school and we took along a couple of holiday photos of us with the bikes to the police station so they would know what they were looking for, and the uber-honest cop took the details, and then crushingly informed us that they probably would never turn up again, and if they did they'd most likely resemble scrap metal

not in the best of moods, i filled in the online crime report form (as it seemed an easier option than wasting my breathe) giving as much detail as i could, including the direction i was told that the culprit had headed off in, the names of the major retailers that faced the carpark he would have gone across that i presume would have their own cctv, and a ten minute time slot that it had all happened in, there you go police, that's most of the hard work done for you.... now, if you could just think about checking the cctv in the area...


what i do get is a phone call 2 days later asking me if the bike was locked when i left it (thank you for reading my report!!), informing me of my crime reference number

and this week i get a letter to let me know that 'the crime has been assessed to see what opportunities exist for further investigation' in order to identify the person responsible for the crime, whether cctv evidence could be recovered was given as one example...

oh, they have concluded that further significant evidence would not be readily available

i'd at least like to think that the police had tried, but considering that the times it could have happened between were minimal and precisely reported and that my bike was stolen from a busy retail park, surrounded by a number of other businesses, i am certain that there would be cctv footage, considering that reports say Britons are captured on cctv 300 times a day, i find it hard to believe that someone upping and leaving with a stolen bike is completely and utterly untraceable

i was already resigned to the fact that it was all for nothing, yet the fact that the 'one size fits all' letter i recieved shows no real attempt to act upon the information i have given to them only seems to smack of the fact that the police could really not be bothered to take the time it would have taken to just check....

it makes me feel that maybe crime is a viable way to make ends meet, with no fear of recrimination, with no real consequences, whoever got away with it has a brand new bike

while i have not a lot more to show for it other than a crime number, an empty space in my shed and increased journey times




for a little more information on the crime of stolen bikes, i'd suggest giving this a read