If you are filing a police report then request that the officer "enter it into NCIC as a stolen article." The officer should know what this means. You will need to have the manufacturer-applied serial number and/or an Owner Applied Number (OAN), in addation to the brand. An OAN must contain between one and twenty alpha-numeric characters, one of which must be a number. The OAN cannot be the same as the manufacturer-applied serial number.

NCIC stands for the National Crime Information Center. It is a computer database of stolen property and wanted/missing persons, that is maintained by the FBI. A stolen article will remain in the system for the year of entry, plus one year. If any other police department recovers your bike then they will have the ability to run an NCIC check on it. If your bike is still in the system, then the inquiring police department will receive a "hit," and will then contact the entering police department.

Some individual police departments require that a stolen bike meets a specific dollar value before they will enter it into NCIC, but it doesn't hust to ask. Be polite about it. If the officer that takes your report tells you that it's against department policy to enter your bike then politely contact someone higher up in the department. One last time: BE POLITE ABOUT IT. NCIC regulations require that most articles have a minimum value of $500, but all office equipment, televisions, and bicycles can be entered regardless of value. You may run into a brick wall with your local police department, but it doesn't hust to try -as long as you're polite about it.

I know all of this because I spent eight years as a 911 dispatcher while I put myself through school. Part of my job was entering stuff into NCIC. I'm not disclosing anything sensitive -I just verfied all of my information from publicly-accessible sources on the internet.