Mark Godsland from Gloucestershire Constabulary is Crime Reduction Advisor to national ‘BikeSafe’ coordination, a small team presently based in Cheshire police area. Mark has vast experience in crime reduction matters and a particular interest in motorcycles et al. I’ll call them powered two wheelers (PTW’s) for ease. There is no intention to exclude anyone by using this term you just know how much the cops love their three letter abbreviations (TLA – sorry!) Mark is also a member of the national motorcycle crime reduction group.

Mark advises that at the time of going to press the very latest figures are awaited, however, regrettably the theft of PTW’s across the country is continuing to rise although the rate at which it is rising is slowing.

The theft nationally of PTW’s is predominantly targeted toward scooters and lower powered bikes, but that’s not to say that medium and higher-powered bikes are not stolen. Police records via the PNC, sorry again, Police National Computer, showed that there were 26,806 stolen PTW’s during 2007.

Of these 1126 were destroyed and 11,486 recovered, giving a recovery rate of 42.85%.

So what’s being done to combat this?
As a user of a PTW and as a Crime Reduction Advisor, Mark wants to ensure that the opportunities for crime and the benefit to the offender is reduced and in the event of any loss that the chances of being caught are increased and that your PTW is harder and less desirable to steal.

In the detection of crime and bringing offenders to justice, the Police Service does take this seriously and continues to make progress in achieving this goal.

The Home Office has published the Bike Theft Index (BTI) and a document dealing with the extent of Bike Theft (see below). More importantly it was highlighted that the Police, Home Office and the Motor Cycle Industry Association (MCI) should work and converse closely with PTW manufacturers to improve the overall package of security on the products that they sell.

The protection of your PTW regardless of size, specification etc is ultimately the owners / riders responsibility, however the Police Service and our partners in the bike industry and community can assist you with information to enable you to make choice’s that meet your needs and, more importantly, budget. But a word of caution, no one product will protect your PTW from theft. An holistic approach needs to be adopted and any security purchases should be used in conjunction with other advice to make your property less vulnerable.

In a word, you can TACAL PTW theft:

Tag it - use approved property marking products to show that your entire machine is protected, which aid in the recovery of items.
Alarm it - use a system that deters and prevents theft. You could even consider a device that will track your bike if stolen.
Cover it - use a cover and make viewing your bike more difficult for a potential thief.
Anchor it - use an approved chain / lock, to anchor the rear wheel of your bike to an immovable object, such as a home anchor, railing, car park bike anchor point. (Caution, avoid leaving your chain/lock on the ground)
Lock it – use the steering lock, use a quality-approved lock, to make it more difficult to ride off with your property.

You may well have the question, what type of products should I purchase to help achieve the above? The Police would suggest that you look toward a product that is tested such as Sold Secure or Thatcham.

Once you have done this, please also remember when out and about to try and park in a designated Secure Bike Area. If not available, park in well lit area that has regular pedestrian usage, preferably under CCTV coverage.

In the unfortunate event that your PTW is stolen, inform the Police immediately, ensuring you give as much detail as possible. Please ensure you obtain an incident and crime number from them as your insurance company will request these in due course.

Finally, is there anything else you can do to help? Well, if you see something suspicious such as bikes going into vans, bikes being carried off, security products on bikes being tampered with or people round a bike with it’s alarm sounding, remember the details and ring the local Police or even Crime Stoppers on 0800 555 111. Sure, it may be the bonafide owner and that is fairly easy to check but looking at Mark’s figure of 26,806 bikes stolen during 2007 there is a chance it may not be.

I hope you have found Mark’s advice interesting and a useful source of reference.