Lock it or lose it
Lock it or Lose it
In January of this year, 142 bicycles were reported stolen in Oxford. That’s an average of almost five a day. With this in mind, I naturally began to wonder: “Just how easy is it steal a bike?” The answer was, initially at least: not very. Caught up in all the excitement of the operation I found myself on Broad Street with my old bike, a lock and a hacksaw, feeling faintly ridiculous. “Right, I am going to steal this,” I said to myself.
After locking the bike outside Balliol I had a good look around me. About 500 metres away I saw two fluorescent blobs getting progressively larger. I took a deep breath and with the adrenaline already searing though my veins, reminded myself that I was going to be fine; after all, I was stealing my own bike.
That might annoy any police I encountered, but it’s not illegal, surely? With my skull pounding, I looked over my shoulder and saw that, as predicted, the two fluorescent blobs had evolved into policemen. Behind them were two slightly larger blobs: mounted policemen. It was at this point, when I realised my little experiment had coincided with some sort of Big Day Out for Thames Valley Police, that I began to reconsider my position.
There is, after all, a limit to the risks I am willing to subject myself to for a student newspaper. Loitering on Broad Street in the middle of the afternoon brandishing a hacksaw, surrounded by the local police force was just one step too far. Therefore I decided to retire to the relative sanctity of Radcliffe Square, encouraged by my photographer’s reassurance that, “Horses can’t walk on cobbles.” It’s a lie, of course.
Inevitably, as I lock the bike up against the railings, two more mounted policemen paraded past on the opposite stretch of the square. I returned the hacksaw to my rucksack and smoothly pulled out my keys. Now my confidence is soaring and I’m beginning to feel like a bit of a pro. As the police moved away, I started to attack the bike lock with the saw. The plastic coating didn’t put up any resistance to my efforts, which was to be expected.
The fact that the general public, supposedly composed of good-hearted, honest individuals, didn’t offer any either was more of a cause for concern. Granted, the Square wasn’t particularly busy, but the only interest I attracted was the occasional family stopping and offering a few bewildered gazes. Two American girls strolled past, greedily digesting their guidebook.
As they haughtily sauntered by, barely a metre away, one of them noticed me and said with astonishment: “He’s stealing that bike!” The other nodded in concurrence and they strolled on. In the distance I hear the words “James Gibbs”, suggesting that their conversation has moved on. Ten minutes later and still no one had confronted me. I was sawing as lightly as possible, but at this point I was well past the plastic insulation and grating against the inner core of the lock.
Eager to raise my profile, I slunk to the Bodleian and ditched my standard issue student attire, jacket and jeans, in favour of some unattractive tracksuit-bottoms, a rather hideous sweatshirt and a baseball cap. Recognising the incredible snobbery implicit in the transformation from student to ‘chav’, I added the coup de grace by tucking the trouser-legs of my tracksuit into my socks (I’ve seen it done) and swaggered back into Radcliffe Square.
A few more shifty looks, but despite his ‘chav’ attire, our Oxford Student bike thief is largely left to get on with his theft
Well, if you’re going to unfairly perpetuate an unpleasent stereotype you might as well do it thoroughly. The reaction was now, as expected, rather different. As I crouched next to the bike and whip out my trusty friend the hacksaw, I could feel the eyes of almost all the passers-by on the back of my head. A few people stopped completely and gawp at me, then wandered away casting the occasional backward look over their shoulders.
A man on his mobile, who had been leaning against the railings chatting since the beginning of the experiment, changed his expression of nonchalance to one of utter bemusement. Perhaps he was on to me. After a further ten minutes of this I had had enough. I was beginning to feel incredibly uncomfortable under the disdainful but ultimately indifferent gaze of the British public.
Feeling that I had contributed rather more than my fair share to this ludicrous experiment, I called a female associate and asked her to take over where I’d left off. In a short black skirt, fish-net tights, a small strappy top and a few subtle bucket-loads of make-up, she had certainly come dressed for the occasion.
She soon settled down to the job in hand whilst I fled to a safe distance James Coglan Hacks his way through Oxford and looks at the social response to thievery Ollie Clough to observe. Would she elicit any more response than I had done? Initially, passers-by paid her no attention at all. A crowd of tourists congregated next to her and pointed their cameras skywards. Astoundingly though, within five minutes her outfit paid dividends.
Mark Bedford, Captain of Trinity’s Badminton Club, arrived on the scene and unconditionally offered his services: “Do you need a hand with that?” Pleased with her new acquaintance, our reporter acquiesced and the helpful young man got stuck in. After about 30 seconds he remarked on the thickness of the steel. “You’ll never get through this on your own.
?? Sure enough, it transpires that if you are trying to hack through 14mm of woven steel, a Badminton player with a strong right arm is an invaluable accessory. At no point were any questions asked about the bike, the lock or its owner. Eventually, seeing that a perfectly good lock was about to be entirely decimated, our damsel-in-distress interjected: “I think I’ll be fine from here.” After much persuasion, she dispatched with our hero and I moved in to assess the damage.
In about 30 seconds of sawing, Bedford had got well over half way through the steel of the lock. Abandoning the hacksaw in favour of the more conventional key, I unlocked the bike in the timehonoured fashion. When we caught up with Bedford later, he told The Oxford Student that “I asked her if she needed a hand, and [was] genuinely oblivious to the fact that she might be attempting to steal the bike.
She was sufficiently convincing when I said ‘What’s up?’, as if it wasn’t obvious anyway, that I had no qualms in having a go at trying to get through the chain. Nor did it occur to me that she would just happen to have a hacksaw on her; I guess I assumed that she had gone to fetch that from somewhere. She was such an innocent looking girl that I just didn’t consider that she was anything other than genuine.
Poor as this is, I may have thought differently if she had looked different!” Clearly then, personal appearance is an important consideration if you are attempting to steal a bike. Avoid baseball caps and tracksuits, these attract mainly negative attention. If you’re male, a good pair of jeans and an everyday jacket should do the trick. If you are a girl, go for that innocent, scantily-clad look and you’ll soon have an accomplice wrapped around your little finger.
However, I’m not sure I can really blame Bedford for his actions: it appears he genuinely wanted to help out and the fact is that he didn’t for a second consider anything amiss. His faith in our reporter’s good intentions is actually quite refreshing; she didn’t exactly look like a ‘typical’ bike thief, after all. Nevertheless, with so many thefts occurring around the city on a daily basis, perhaps a little more vigilance would be appropriate.
It’s hardly shocking that bicycle theft is such a lucrative business if students are so accommodating. Is it surprising that no one confronted us last Thursday afternoon? Not really, according to Thames Valley Police. PC Jim Abram of the Crime Team tells me that he is “yet to receive a call saying someone’s cutting a lock”. When we outlined the plan for our experiment to Oxford University Security Services we were wearily told, “You will succeed.” Bike theft is just too easy a crime.
So, for those people who walked past on Thursday afternoon, and for anyone finding themselves in a similar situation, what should you do if you suspect you are witnessing a theft? Abram recommends the following: If you are on University property, call the Security Services on 01865 272944. If the crime can be captured by OUSS on CCTV, the chances of a successful prosecution are greatly increased.
If not on University property, one should call Thames Valley’s non-emergency line on 08458 505 505. Of course, it is fairly unlikely that a ring of prolific female cycle thieves operate by the Rad Cam in broad daylight. Many bikes are stolen at night often by people systematically wrenching at each one in turn to see if it’s properly secured. So, check and double-check that you have not only used the lock, but that the bike is actually locked to something.
This is particularly important on those hazy evenings after a long day in the library or, perhaps, the pub. There are other seemingly-obvious pieces of advice that students frequently ignore, simple stuff like: register your bike with your college, (that the police provide this service is one of the less-exciting urban myths). In addition, write your own postcode on the bike in UV pen or, better, with an electric engraver or puncher.
Key the serial number of your bike into your mobile phone so that the police can identify it more easily. Finally, get a good lock as high quality as you can realistically afford. Even if your bike is old and virtually worthless, consider the inconvenience factor and the high replacement cost at certain times of year when deciding how much effort to put into protecting it. This may all seem a little excessive.
From personal experience though, it’s difficult to appreciate how incredibly irritating it is to become a victim of bicycle theft until it actually happens to you.
23rd Feb 2006