BY LINDA HOU

In print | Published January 28, 2010 — Updated January 31, 2010 21:14

As Dan Spagnolo ’13 was preparing to go home after finals, he discovered that his bike was no longer among the unlocked bikes in the Mary Lyon bike room.

“I left it in the ML bike racks unlocked during finals week because it had a flat tire,” Spagnolo said. When he went to collect it at the end of the week, it was nowhere to be found.

His wasn’t the only bike stolen — Director of Public Safety Owen Redgrave said there have been five reported bike thefts last semester, which doesn’t include Spagnolo’s from this semester. Within the Borough of Swarthmore, Chief of Police Brian Craig said that about 15 to 20 bikes are reported as stolen every year.

He said that they usually cost from $50 to $400, though one recent theft involved a later-recovered $4,000 bike from a house that was broken into.

Lindsay Yanez, who owns Swarthmore Cycles in the Ville, said that she frequently interacts with the college’s students. As some students have come to her after their bikes have been stolen, Yanez said that it seems like there has been a recent spike in bike thefts on campus. She added she thinks that such thefts should be investigated.

“I just feel like it’s horribly unfair that your bike is at risk so much here,” she said. “I feel like we’re in Philadelphia…There shouldn’t be a kid calling me every week [about stolen bikes].”

Redgrave, though, said that the number of thefts is in line with the past.

“With crime, you have to look at a fairly long period of time to see trends… I don’t see this as an unusual trend. The bikes that were taken were valued at anywhere from $50 up to a few hundred. I don’t see any trend that somebody’s targeting high-end bikes,” Redgrave said.

However, Public Safety also does not receive reports of all bike thefts that occur on campus.
Jonathan Hui ’12 had his unlocked bike stolen outside of Rogers, and chose not to report it to Public Safety.

“I was already thinking of getting a new bike,” Hui said. “When it got stolen, I decided it wasn’t worth the effort [to report it to Public Safety.”

Redgrave also acknowledges the fact that not all information about bike thefts are reported to Public Safety.

“Whether students report this or not, if anything, is up to them,” Redgrave said. “One could’ve been stolen but if it wasn’t reported to us, we wouldn’t have known.”

The stolen bikes are usually never recovered, and little can be done in the attempt. What’s sometimes left behind is a reduction in student trust in the security of Swarthmore.

“There’s some trust that I have that’s gone,” Spagnolo said. “I come from a dorm where people keep their doors unlocked and there’s an exchange of things like DVDs… It’s just the fact that someone who could’ve just walked into the dorm and took it, who knows what else they could’ve done if they were more malicious.”

While both the Borough Police and Public Safety provide students with tools to prevent bicycle theft, these are rarely publicized or used.

For example, the Borough of Swarthmore Police Department provides a bike registration program that allows anyone to come in with a bike and to report its serial number, allowing it to be identified if stolen and recovered. Craig said, though, that only two to three people use this registration program. He added that the borough recovers about 20 to 25 bicycles a year that, if unregistered, make it hard to identify the owners.

“It’s very hard to match them up with the owner. Because we have such limited storage space, we hold the bicycles for 90 days and then we try to make arrangements with a charity to donate them,” he said.

Public Safety purchased engravers, which students may check out for free and use to engrave their driver’s license numbers on their bikes. Redgrave said that this effort was inspired by the national Operation Identification Program, which encourages people to mark their belongings to prevent theft and allow recovery for stolen objects. He admitted, however, that he “can’t think of the last time anyone’s used” the engravers.

Redgrave said, though, that this is the best way for police stations across the country to return recovered bikes to their owners. Whereas serial numbers are only known to police stations where the bikes are registered, any police station in the US can retrieve information from a driver’s license number.

“These things will virtually work on anything—a watch, a piece of jewelry, a CD, your computer… It’s really only useful if your property is recovered, but it probably has some deterrent value,” Redgrave said.

Both Craig and Redgrave said that most stolen bikes were stolen because they were unlocked.

“We get very few reports of bikes stolen that are secure, and just being in the dorm is not secure. It needs to be attached to something,” Craig said.

The presence of locks does not always guarantee bike security, though. Both Nick Palazzolo ’13 and Alex Huber-Weiss ’13 had locked bikes stolen last semester — one from the bike rack outside Wharton and one from the rack between Dana and Hallowell.

Redgrave said that while any type of lock deters a thief, U-shaped metal bike locks are recommended because they are hard to clip.

“The number of bikes that have been locked with that kind of lock, I can only think of one case of when it has been stolen, and that [owner had locked it] over a pole. All you had to do was to pick up the bike over the pole,” Redgrave said.

In addition, Craig recommends students take off parts of their bike when leaving it behind. “The other possibilities are maybe removing the wheel … or taking the seat off … it makes it very inconvenient to ride it. But the best thing is to lock it.”

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