Anti-theft Dots: "Like DNA for your property"

Marking your bike as your own in an indelible way is a challenge—serial numbers can be filed off, after all—and it's hard to keep track of bike parts, which can be stripped off a stolen frame and sold separately. Enter anti-theft dots, an effectively invisible adhesive that contains thousands of microscopic dots etched with a you-specific number. Take a look/listen:

Law enforcement in Portland has embraced the anti-theft dot technology. What about in your 'hood?

Get Thee a Warrant

A bill currently in Oregon's Senate Judiciary Committee would, BikePortland.org reports, require judges to consider "electronic location information" probable cause for a search warrant.

What's electronic location information, you ask? Imagine your beloved bike, outfitted with a tracking device, gets stolen and you're able, via an app on your phone, say, to see that the thief has stowed your ride in a garage at precisely [insert address here].

That's electronic location information.

Eugene area State Senator Chris Edwards, who has heard of cases in which bike owners tracked their stolen bikes but were told by police that the information was not actionable, introduced Senate Bill 861 to "start a conversation between law enforcement personnel and the bike community about what common practice is in situations like this."

Read more.

"Piles almost to the point of mountains"

In a mass reclamation operation this month, University of Wisconsin–Madison police confiscated 600 bicycles from a bike shop, an apartment, a storage unit, and a farm in Madison and the neighboring towns of Muscoda and Windsor.

Authorities suspect that many of the bikes are stolen, though their serial numbers may not show up in police databases because the thefts were never reported or occurred long enough ago that the relevant records have been purged. Charges of possession of stolen property are pending against two men, but, so far, the accused maintain their innocence.

Get the story from WKOW:

Launch of Bike Theft Task Force Delayed

My "bike theft" Google news alert was chock full last week of stories about a bike theft task force the Portland, Oregon, police force was, so reported the Associated Press, set to launch.

A news conference about the initiative was set for 1:30 pm on Thursday, February 26, but was postponed, The Oregonian reported, due to "unforeseen circumstances." There remain, said Portland Police Bureau spokesman Sergeant Pete Simpson, "logistical issues that need to be worked through."

Meanwhile... Here's one issue area cyclists are hoping the task force will be able to tackle once assembled:

"He may be lying to my face"

Here's a bike recovery story for your Monday. Watch it for the hipster facial hair if nothing else.



Maybe Andrew will lug the Bridgestone (-stone not -port, KOMO News—get it right!) up those three flights of stairs now? I know I would.