ACCORDING TO DUBLIN Cycling Campaign, around 20,000 bikes are stolen each year in Dublin.
Dublin Cycling Campaign is a voluntary group that lobbies local and national government to bring about improved conditions for cyclists.
“Many thefts are not reported to gardaí,” says chairperson Úna Morrison, “and we estimate that about 20,000 bikes are stolen in Dublin each year.”
She said bike theft is the biggest worry among the thousand or so cycling members that the group represents.
“The guards have been relatively successful in finding stolen bikes in some cases, but a lot of people don’t feel like reporting a bike as stolen will make any difference.”
Morrison added that some social media accounts, such as ‘Stolen Bikes Dublin’ on X, can sometimes reunite bikes with their owners.
“It happens sometimes that people get their bikes back but rarely, like anything that is stolen, I guess.”
In February, the leader of an organised crime gang which handled and stole bikes in London was sentenced to almost three years in prison following a ‘bike bait’ sting by police.
The bike was tracked to a warehouse in east London and there, police recovered 57 bikes with a value of £100,000.
The number of reported bike thefts in the City of London, known by some as the Square Mile, fell from 68 per month at the height of the gang’s spree in August 2020 to seven in January 2021.
Detective Constable Matt Cooper, in the Serious Organised Crime Team at City of London Police, said this was an example of the force “employing technology and innovative techniques to limit opportunities to commit criminal activities”.
Morrison told The Journal that there is a possibility that bikes being stolen on the streets of Dublin could also be part of an organised crime network.
“We don’t know where all the bikes end up, they could end up in containers and go across the Irish Sea,” said Morrison.
Green Party councillor for Dublin North Inner City Janet Horner also told The Journal that there is an organised crime element to bike theft in the capital.
“There’s two categories of bike theft,” said Horner.
“One is opportunistic, which is young people seeing that a bike is not properly locked up, and they take it and try to sell it on.
“The other one is something that is much more organised.”
Horner said there have been examples of criminals “scouting out locations and streets being targeted in one go”.
“Somebody comes with a van and a lot of different bikes are taken from the same street in the same night,” said Horner.
“High value bikes are being identified, we’ve seen bike bunkers targeted in one or two cases.
“The suspicion is, because there isn’t full traceability, that maybe they end up going out through Dublin Port and they go on to a different market and they’re sold on at that point, which means they’re not reemerging into the Dublin market.
“We have seen evidence that there is a much more organised approach to bike theft in some cases, so we need to regard it as a more organised and higher-level crime than it sometimes otherwise is,” said Horner.
When asked if the bike bait ploy is one she would like to see implemented in Dublin, Morrison of Dublin Cycling Campaign said “anything that’ll deter people from stealing bikes or help reunite people with their bikes is a positive”.
However, she added: “Whether we go as far as calling for something like this to be implemented, we call for a lot of things so I might hold my fire on that.”
Meanwhile, Horner said the likelihood that young people will mostly be the perpetrators of bike theft should not be a barrier to implementing something like a bike bait scheme.
“If it is an opportunistic version of bike theft, it is still serious and something that needs to be taken seriously.
“This discernment can be made by the gardaí and there obviously needs to be discernment between organised criminal operations and a teenager who thought they could get an extra €50 for the weekend.”
While Horner said the bike bait sting is something she would like gardaí to look at, she pointed to other areas where Dublin City Council and gardaí could work together.
While Horner noted that Dublin City Council has implemented indoor bike parking in some locations, such as on Drury Street, she added that there have been a “few instances where those bike parking centres have been targeted for theft”.
“The council has a role to play to ensure security is increased in these places,” said Horner.
“If people are using a secure bike parking space provided by the council, they should be able to reasonably expect it to be secure.”
She also noted the importance of the bike bunker scheme, which are secure hangars for city residents to store their bicycles close to their home and under cover, as opposed to storing bicycles in hallways or in small back yards.
Horner also called for “better co-operation between gardaí and the Council around sharing locational data”.
The Green Party councillor told The Journal: “I’d love for the gardaí to be monitoring, and for the Council to be sharing, information about locations that can inform where the Council chooses to put in bike parking, and to remove bike parking from some hotspots where we know bike thefts are happening.
“I’d also like gardaí to monitor online sites more where people might be selling on second-hand bikes, just to see if bikes are cropping up that have been reported stolen.”
However, Horner acknowledged that these sites are home to the “lower-level stuff where people have grabbed a bike and try to pass it on immediately, rather than the higher-level organised crime”.
While Horner said “bait bikes are definitely one part” of what she would like to see implemented in Dublin, she added that “there is a wider suite of measures we could and should be doing if we want to take this seriously”.
However, Horner told The Journal that there is a “sense” among cyclists that bike theft isn’t being taken seriously.
“Gardaí will say they are taking it seriously and engaging with it as they would any other crime that is reported to them.
“But there are people who’ve had bad experiences with guards telling them they’re not particularly interested or that there’s no point in pursuing it.
“Once those stories get out, it creates a wider impression among people that it is a hopeless cause to report it.”
Despite this, Horner said it is important to report bike theft so that if the bike does turn up at some stage, there is a record of the theft being logged and the bike can be returned.
Horner also warned that some people have a sense of “impunity” when attempting to steal bikes because of the inaction of others.
“I’ve challenged two people when they were attempting to steal a bike,” said Horner.
“In both cases, I have been amazed at how many other people were witnessing something like this and not challenging or not saying anything.
“There is a significant impunity to people feeling it’s something they can do on the side of the road.”
Horner told The Journal that her advice to cyclists to deter bike theft is to “always lock the frame and the wheel to the bike stand to make it more difficult to steal”.
She also remarked that if you take a close look at bikes parked in Dublin, you will see “plenty of bikes with a dent in their crossbar where presumably someone has tried to steal it at some stage”.
Horner said her own bike has a dent in the crossbar, “probably from someone trying to steal it one time”.
Dublin Cycling Campaign also encouraged people to lock their bikes in multiple ways to “make things as awkward as possible for someone trying to rob your bike”.
It also called on employers to provide good bike parking facilities and encouraged people to use covered bike sheds that are supervised.
The Journal has approached An Garda Síochána and Dublin City Council for comment.
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