this post was submitted on 19 Feb 2026
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Street Bike theft is a trivial crime that isn't worth wasting resources on. Most bikes are petty larceny unless they are $1000+ and that is the value of the bike at the time of theft, not the fact you paid $3000 for it 5 years ago.
Typically when the police are involved it's organized crime situations of mass bike theft from shops or containers that bring much higher chargers.
There are multiple cases of individual bike thefts being connected to larger organized crime groups. Of course, we often only know that because of investigations by people who aren't police.
The case you are linking to involves $5000+ bikes. That's not petty theft, that's similar to car theft. The crime is already grand larceny per theft. Of course with that amount of money people are going to be way more motivated, and it's going to be a small subset of very wealthy enthusiasts. The vast majority of bikes people ride and that get stolen are in the $100 range, usually by homeless people who part them out for scrap metal to get money for drugs. In my city any homeless encampment has piles of stolen bikes that are torn apart because the alloy parts are what they can scrap for some decent money. The steel is worthless.
The lost value of bike theft is not the value of the bike. It's way worse the value of the perceived safety.
For every bike that is stolen, tens of people hear how city X is full of bike thieves, deterring them from buying a bike themselves. Which results in more cars and less bikes. Which is very damaging. Way worse than the price of the bike.