bicycle theft story in Toronto

[xlbs]

for those of you who have ever had a bicycle stolen, this is an interesting and developing story.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080731.wbikes31/BNStory/National/

If you search on "bicycle theft" you can read the whole history...

Toronto will never be the same again!

[BumpyintheBurgh]

2700 Bikes....and you thought that you had too many. Good excuse to add to your collection.

[dannyg1]

for those of you who have ever had a bicycle stolen, this is an interesting and developing story.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080731.wbikes31/BNStory/National/

If you search on "bicycle theft" you can read the whole history...

Toronto will never be the same again!

From what I can glean, this is the story of a guy that believes that he's saving abandoned bikes and is utilizing a convenient loophole in Toronto law to ease his (obviously tipped towards the sociopathic) conscience. Once the police got a clue of his MO, they baited him with a bike across the street and he chomped.

There are hulks and remains of bikes, usually the byproduct of being illegally stripped in situ, littering every city and there is a idea amongst the younger biking public that the hulks are fair game. There's a very broad, fuzzy line separating the self-mediated 'saving' of a hulk from the act of stealing someones favorite bike.

Apparantly this particular man thought of stealing bikes as a game as he admitted to setting up hurdles for stolen bike owners to jump before being 'permitted' to reclaim their property from him. The really sad part is that he seems to truly believe that he's done little wrong.

These articles reinforce a reality based credo: Never leave a bike that's worth any more than $10 locked on the street. Too many people in the world think of bikes as a nuisance and that negative societal connotation makes them very difficult to protect. Even from the organized, populist bicycling set.

[dannyg1]

After listening to this:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/v5/content/audio/igor_highlights4.MP3

I take it all back. This guy is pretty obviously in it just for the thievery.