After a Dalhousie student recently stole his high-end mountain bike from his underground parking lot, local vendors encourage people to insure their bikes, regardless of their value.
“Most bikes are stolen at the opportunity,” said Andrew Feenstra, owner of the Cyclesmith bike shop on Agricola Street.
“Maybe it’s not closed, or, you know, it’s locked with a very cheap lock, and they’re only going to use a basic pair of side cutters that will cut that lock, and that happens, we see that all the time.”
Ben Hewins, an immunology student in Dalhousie, never thought that his professional mountain bike, worth nearly $ 12,000, would be stolen under him, literally.
Hewin’s bicycle was pulled out of a locked cage in his apartment’s underground car park.
“The initial thought is that it’s a really safe building and you probably shouldn’t worry too much about that kind of thing,” Hewins said, adding that his girlfriend’s $ 3,000 bike was also stolen from him.
Hewins says his bike was retailed for about $ 12,000. (Ben Hewin)
“Together, these two thieves stole about $ 15,000 in bicycles in one fell swoop.”
Although his bicycle was insured, Hewins recommends reading the fine print carefully because his policy only covered $ 2,000, a fraction of the value of his stolen bicycle.
And Hewins is not alone.
Jackson Jenkins is a resident of the far north of Halifax who reported a similar robbery at the same time. His $ 1,500 bicycle and nearly 50 more were removed from an underground garage after thieves used a lock sharpener to enter.
Police say there may be several reasons for the fluctuating number of bicycle thefts in Halifax, but they see no pattern.
Feenstra says there are criminal gangs stealing bicycles in bigger cities like Montreal and Toronto, something Halifax doesn’t have because of the lack of high-end bikes. But just because you have a less expensive bike, that doesn’t mean they won’t steal it from you.
It is recommended to use a quality lock and secure the bike in a well-lit space when in public. Once at home, the safest places for your bike are inside.
“It’s better to lock it inside,” Feenstra said.
Feenstra says stolen bicycles on the street are usually recovered later. But Marc Rickard, owner of The Bike Peddler in Dartmouth, says he sees fewer stolen bikes resurfacing in the province.
“More and more we find that when a bike is stolen from us, they take it out of the province very quickly and resell it elsewhere,” Rickard said. “My suspicion is also that the stolen bikes are popping up from outside the province here and are being sold at places like Marketplace or Facebook or Kijiji.”
Mike Blotnicky, president of Halifax Buy and Sell Inc., told CBC by email that they had to stop pedestrian biking or shopping a few years ago because of exactly this problem.
A screenshot of the Project 529 Garage application. (Project 529 Garage)
“It was impossible to determine the ownership of a bicycle, and most likely half of the bicycles we had in our store were stolen.”
Ellen Riopelle, operations and advocacy coordinator for the Halifax Cycling Coalition, recommends registering your bike with an app such as Project 529 Garage, a national database and mobile app that helps combat bicycle theft. Once you enter the serial number and description of your bike, other people will be able to see this information through the app.
Riopelle says people can use the app to take care of themselves.
“With bike theft, it has to be like a community effort to get the bike back because it’s very difficult to locate it because it changes hands often after it’s stolen.”
Steve Bedard, chief operating officer of Bicycle Nova Scotia, a non-profit organization that promotes the culture of cycling, says employers and residences in various units, such as condominiums and apartment buildings, should think more about provide a secure bicycle parking space behind closed doors. in the building.
“A good example of some buildings that are doing this now include Velo Apartments on Göttingen Street and the Joseph Howe building in the city center,” Bedard said in an email.
Hewins says since the robbery, one of the two alleged bicycle thieves was arrested. However, police have no further information on the whereabouts of his bicycle.
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