Stash of believed stolen bicycles found by Nanaimo RCMP

He says two of the most common ways people have secured their bikes that lead to them being stolen is solely using a cable lock as the main lock or only locking the front tire which usually has a quick-release function. Photo: Nanaimo RCMP

Nanaimo RCMP has tracked down a stash of bicycles they believed to have been stolen.
The Nanaimo RCMP said the bikes were located by officers with the RCMP Bike Patrol Unit on Wednesday, April 17. The bikes were found in a woody area in the vicinity of Jingle Pot Road and Third Street. Other items including several handheld tools belonging to Nanaimo Search and Rescue and a small number of tools were also found.

The RCMP said the bikes seized are relatively new and some are of considerable value.

Rob Brunt, the Chief Outreach Officer for Project 529 and retired police officer, said he has seen a lot of stolen bikes get seized by the police, but left unclaimed, unable to be returned to legitimate owners. It was in 2015 when he first sought to find a better way for police to return bikes. That’s when he got connected with Project 529.

Project 529 is an app, website, and database that allows bike owners to register their bikes, and maximize efforts to get their stolen bike back. The service allows users to upload photos of the bike and the bike serial number to the database. Police can rely on the database to connect stolen bikes with their owners.

Signs from the City of Nanaimo encourage riders to register their bikes through Project 529 can be found in bike shops around town.

Brunt said although there is not a certain time of the year when bike theft is more common, it is during the spring and summer time when he sees bikes being stolen a lot more from the outdoors.

He said the best way to combat bike thrift is to get a good-quality lock and learn how to use it.

“Get yourself a good lock, lock it to an immovable object and what I mean is something that's bolted down, it's not gonna go anywhere,” Brunt said.” Don't lock it to a tree that can be cut or any other such things that are easy to get the bike off of.”

He said it is also important to have the lock capture as much of the bike as possible.

“Use that lock and capture the rear triangle, and also your back tire. But, if you have a lock that's big enough to capture, try to capture everything together,” he said.

He also said to try to lock your bike in spots with other bikes or with a lot of pedestrian traffic and to not keep them locked overnight.

In the last nine years working on bike theft, Brunt said he has seen everything when it came to people using different methods to steal bikes.

“I've seen people lock their bikes onto a really nice bike rack on the back of somebody's truck, and they've actually cut the rack off of the truck,” Brunt said. “I've seen a University of British Columbia where thieves rented a U-haul and stole a whole rack with bicycles. That bike rack wasn't attached to the concrete so they just stole the whole rack.”

He said two of the most common ways people have secured their bikes that lead to them being stolen is solely using a cable lock as the main lock or only locking the front tire which usually has a quick-release function to remove it

If a bike is stolen, he said the owner can use Project 529 (529 Garage) if they have registered their bike to alert the community including various bike shops registered with the app and RCMP.

“Everybody on the app within 15 kilometres, gets an amber alert about your bicycle. It shows where its geo dash is where your bike was stolen, and sends out that picture of the side of your bike to everybody,” Brunt said. “So you might not know what a NorCo Bigfoot looks like, but you're gonna get a picture of it.”

He said if the RCMP later finds the bike, they can use the information in the database to find the original owner. As well members of the community and bike shops will be able to use the stolen bike database to check if a bike is reported stolen.

“One of the scenarios is we see a lot of the police volunteers that go out into the community whether it's crime watch or block watch and they see a bike dumped in the bushes and they use this system,” he said. “They can search the database and now they can send a tip to the owner and say, ‘hey, we've found your bike, we've brought it back to the community police office.’” 

Brunt said one of the most important things to do if your bike is stolen is to report it to the police.

“My catchphrase, I always like to say, is register your bike, report it if it gets stolen, because the police, we run on a squeaky wheel,” he said. “If you don't report it stolen, the police have no clue how bad bike theft is in your community.”

The Nanaimo RCMP asks if anyone has any information on the ownership of any of the bikes to call the Nanaimo RCMP non-emergency line at 250-754-2345.

Funding Note: This story was produced with funding support from the Local Journalism Initiative, administered by the Community Radio Fund of Canada.