SFPD anti bike theft unit!
 

Officer Matt Friedman of SFPD is my new hero. Check out the video at the top of the article: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/28/us...s.html?hp&_r=0

Thats awesome. I wish las vegas had something like that. I would rock that sticker on every bike.

That looks like a well intentioned program and I hope it has a positive effect. But I do hope they would not publish pictures of people they arrested. That might make sense for people that get convicted.

Looking at the second photo in the article, where the caption reads: "A bike with a missing seat outside a city library. Often, the police say, the culprits are drug addicts." -- given that the owner's U-Lock is visibly in use, I wonder if s/he might not have taken the saddle-and-seat-post with them... not uncommon to do so, but then that's not "news", right?

Could also be a Brooks that got stolen. Brooks are hipstery now, so loads in SF. I passed through Sacramento on the long weekend, and we stopped at the Railroad museum. There was a bike rack diagonally opposite the museum, with a big message stenciled above it: "Can you tell which one of these is a bait bike?"

I've got a framed picture of their unit poster in my home office. Love it.


http://sfcitizen.com/blog/wp-content..._orig-copy.jpg

Well, that is an awesome logo.

M.

Protecting the privacy of people who accidentally steal the bait bike?

Your comment makes my point. Being arrested does not mean you're guilty.

I realize that. I'm just trying to imagine a scenario in which an innocent person comes into possession of a locked bike.

Being found not guilty doesn't mean you're innocent.

In this case it just means that you stole a bait bike?

Nice.

- Andy

Which is still theft, right?

M.

This is awesome! Wish every city had something similar! :thumb:

+1 ^ This guy has a point. Checkout this scenario:

So a real bike thief takes a bait bike worth well over a thousand bucks. He then takes it to the Panhandle Park and parks it next to you and your friend who are just sitting and talking in the Park. This bike thief guy, casually knows your friend. He chimes in on the conversation. You all begin to freely chat. Suddenly, you get the idea that you'd like to go to the store for a snack. You ask this guy, if it'll be alright for you to borrow his nice bike to ride to the store. You get half way to the store, when suddenly you're overtaken by a swarm of San Francisco's finest. You're then arrested! You keep saying, "But officer, it's not really my bike!"...To which they respond, "Yeah! We know___!"...

:lol: :roflmao2: :lol:

Where'd you get that?

http://blog.aarp.org/wp-content/uplo...Picture-23.png

:D

- Andy

That's just way too hilarious, Andy! :lol:

Google image search the highest resolution you can find and then go to a store that prints image files from one of those kiosks. Buy matting and a frame and there you have it. You wouldn't believe how many framed pictures in my home were just JPG's I printed out myself and framed. I almost always mat them to "size up" to the next size frame to make them look bigger than they are. Also websites like canvas 4 life can check images to see how big they can be sized without losing too much detail. Printing stuff on canvass is nice because some of the pixelation that can occur is hidden by the texture of the canvass.

You're assuming that the person really had possession when arrested. Try harder on the imagination. You've never heard of bad police work? You've never heard of being in the wrong place at the wrong time?

Yes, being found not guilty does not mean you're innocent. But it does mean there's reasonable doubt. And you should not have your picture spread around as a thief.

If i ever caught someone trying to steal my bike:

http://image.tmdb.org/t/p/original/y...J5eopjzNy4.jpg

- Andy

In this case the thieves aren't getting far with the bike. The video even shows the a thief being grabbed just off camera. It's the same as bait cars. They dont let you get far. They dont need to, you're in possession of stolen property as soon you walk away with it. So, I say, show their pics they deserve it.

There's a difference between being accused of something and getting caught red handed. On the flipside, who in their right mind leaves a nice bike unattended in the city?

Yeah, but sometimes police get distracted. There's a drug dealer selling to kids over there, Jim! Get 'em!... There's a purse snatcher coming your way Capt'n! Grab 'em! OTOH, the guys might be in the middle of their donuts...Who knows?..Stuff happens!

If anything does happen, that causes the police any slight delay of time, between the actual theft and the arrest, then the accused should not be photographed until after conviction.

+1

OTOH, I would agree, that if the thief is caught red-handed then a photo should be forwarded pronto!

These operations are stings. The thief is always caught red handed. The bike is identified before the operation the location where it is to be left is not random to the degree that there is a plan. There is most likely video rolling the entire time (from multiple angles in some cases) and the thief is taken into custody in close proximity to the location of occurrence with the proceeds of the crime in their possession. Circumstances happen that lead to innocent people being accused of crimes, but this isn't likely to be one of those scenarios.

Don't believe everything you see on TV...

My brother's a cop! I've got a thousand stories I could tell ya, buddy! :lol:

+1! Look at all the cases where even after people go to court they get wrongly convicted of a crime they didn't commit, as can be proven by DNA. My faith in the justice system is rather low. But I still have way more faith in convictions than arrests because the more people handle a case, the more checks and balances there are that might kick it out. There's no reason to assume the sting is actually being run the way you've been told it would. And there's no reason not to delay publishing pictures until after conviction. The principle of innocent until proven guilty is always important. Maybe even more important in cases where there's very compelling evidence of guilt.

You left out the part where they taze you for no apparent reason. ;)

Seriously, I'll admit that this is a plausible scenario. For a white male with a stable employment history, this story might even be enough to avoid conviction. Pessimistically, I would expect that stories like will be used in defenses soon and that quick hand-offs will become a common part of the bike thieves repertoire in the near future. I actually had thought about it, and I came up with an Assassin's Creed-type scenario where the thief takes the bike and immediately rides to a park bench and sits next to the bike for a while, then if questioned claims that somebody else left the bike there. I can easily see that evolving into the thief leaving the bike next to a stranger sitting on a bench for some period of time. Video of the actual theft would be key to prosecution.

In any event, it's already common practice for newspapers and television news to publish photos of people who have been arrested but not convicted of various crimes. There's really nothing new here in that regard. The reason not to wait for conviction is that a program like this isn't really about getting convictions. SFPD doesn't want people in jail for bike theft. More likely this is a program to trigger probation violation for people they want in jail for other reasons. Secondarily, it works as a deterrent to theft, and that's what the published photo part of the program seems to be about.

From a legal perspective: It is completely legal for the pictures and names of arrested individuals to be disseminated, provided that they are labeled as arrests, not convictions. Likewise, if it is a youth, there are many laws which prevent their name from being released or their often their likeness (blurring).

As Andy pointed out, this is indeed designed as a deterrent and a way to catch repeat offenders.

What these operations would do on the short term is to force thieves to go for low end bikes rather than higher end one. (Not the same risk) Which could eventually give space for all those cyclists that didn't want to use their more expensive bike for daily commute (and by ricochet all those LBS selling more expensive bikes, which should be good for the economy ;). Though it could also prevent newcomers with low end (walmart) bikes to keep cycling....or not if the theft rate goes down)
What could also happen in the long run is that thieves would find countermeasures like with anything else. Neverending story. :fight: