Theft...are we less vulnerable?

[Athame57]

My friends thirteen year old daughter just had her motocross bike snatched off her at a track by six louts, another dirt bike owner told me of the numerous attempts to break into his garage. In London a scooter owner told me 'I'm quite safe...it's scooters they are after'. By now I'm asking are we safer than others? Nothing will stop me using a monster chain and bike cover whatever.

[SumpMagnet]

The trend for gang thefts in London tailed off a bit when the Police stopped the policy of basically letting the thieves escape for fear of hurting them...and instead, resorted to ramming the little swine off their scooters and into the weeds. Before...they would take off helmets and wear bandana over their faces like wild west bandits. The risk of injury meant the Met left them alone. Saw them quite a few times before....not since!

But the 'serious' bike thief is stealing what can be stolen and moved on rapidly. With the prices of some classics heading into VERY silly money...targetted theft for parts is bound to be an issue.
I have heard of thieves using trackers to 'tag' bikes of value, monitoring their location and seeing where they stop. Then stealing from the storage location. In each case, these were high value modern sportsbikes....but I suspect restored classics will be on the radar.

Casual thieves do target scooters, especially ther smaller end, as lots of kids want them and enough will buy a cheap one with no paperwork and no questions asked. But also, the number of these scoots I see just parked up with no lock, no real security, and even with a crash helmet just stuffed in a top box. Might as well leave the keys in it.....

My Monster chain goes with me if I go out, as well as a disc lock for the other end. At home I now have a garage...and the garage has a ground anchor for me to chain it to. If they get through the gate to access the service road, then through the steel door ( not a flimsy up and over job) they then have to deal with the chain and anchor. While the alarm is going off. Visible deterrents will mean the casual tea-leaf will go elsewhere. Its the best you can do.

[McCabe-Thiele (Ted)]

It's my experience that local crime where I live especially theft and dwelling house & shed burglary is directly related to the drug users resident in our catchment area - then on top of that you have local young males (louts) showing off in front of their mates - peer pressure & hormones seems to cause some teenagers to do some disgraceful acts thinking it's a huge joke.

We were last burgled about 30 years ago by a local Heroin addict who lived in some then new social housing about half a mile away. Luckily we live in an area mainly populated by older folk with few young families nearby asside from some very respectful well behaved asians who do not hang around the streets. Fortunately we are not in a buy to let area either so we are a pretty static neighbourhood - I've lived here since 1984 and am a relative newcomer!

Since our house fire in Nov 2017 I have installed CCTV that's visible to give us some type of deterrent from casual opportunists.

[Athame57]

My Monster chain goes with me if I go out, as well as a disc lock for the other end. At home I now have a garage...and the garage has a ground anchor for me to chain it to. If they get through the gate to access the service road, then through the steel door ( not a flimsy up and over job) they then have to deal with the chain and anchor. While the alarm is going off. Visible deterrents will mean the casual tea-leaf will go elsewhere. Its the best you can do.

I'm not strong enough to carry my Oxford Monster with me, I nearly got a hernia getting it here from the shop! I plain don't take the bike if I can't stay with it or close by all the time. I keep a cover over her to keep out of temptations sight but that didn't save my petrol the other week lol. It gets chained to railings with a lot of scooters about to tempt them away. At weekends when the nazi housing officer isn't marching about with her precious clip board and ID lanyard I bring it into the courtyard direct (see pic) , but that rules out having an alarm, one of those going off in the night would end tolerance for me. We get a lot of trouble from two of the five scooters outside every time it rains or gets very cold, here we go again...beep beep beep beep ...weee..weeeee.eee beep beep I've begged the dorks to buy covers but it's too much trouble. So far only one scooter nicked and he had been away for weeks.

[Moorey]

Unfortunately these days battery angle grinders make short work of most security measures as can be seen on many youtube videos of bikes been nicked in London.

[Spitfire]

Moto cross bikes are the favourite bikes to nick around here, my grandson lost one from a locked garage at his house, and another from a locked container at the local track where he kept it for safety.

Cheers

Dennis

[SumpMagnet]

It's true a decent cordless angle grinder will cut most chains with time.... but it's noisy and liable to attract attention.

Opportunist thieves will still look for the easiest targets, unless you have a bike that is in demand. Sad fact of life.....having nice things makes you a target.