Where do stolen bikes go?
I had a £2,000 electric bike stolen in Oxford. No worries - it had a GPS tracker, and I could see it heading to Birmingham up the M40. Also, my neighbour had CCTV footage. You couldn't make out the faces or number-plate, but you could see it was a black Mercedes. It was taken at about 3AM.<p>So they had "liberated" the bike (it was locked up), and immediately headed out of town. I'm sure it was scouted, then they came back in the small hours to steal it. I'm convinced that it was an organized operation, and the bike might have been stolen to order.<p>When it stopped moving, I could see it was located in the back of a house in a Birmingham suburb. So I rang the Oxford police.<p>They weren't interested - they told me to contact West Midlands police. So I rang them. No, they were not going to investigate: "Don't you realize how many Porsches are stolen in this city every day?" Also, they said they can't just walk in and have a look around (I guess they need a warrant, which is fair enough; but then why not get a warrant?)<p>Like, I knew the address it was located at; so maybe the WM police would provide an officer to protect me, when I head up to Brum to collect the machine? No way.<p>So I gave up. My replacement has no GPS tracker.<p>So my experience seems to differ from the Amsterdam narrative. I had heard that most stolen bikes end up in Birmingham. My anecdote appears to confirm that bikes stolen in Oxford don't stay in Oxford.