davis_square | Two bikes briefly stolen

Entry tags:

bicycle,
crime

Two bikes briefly stolen

Overnight our two bicycles were stolen from our front porch on Prichard Ave (south of Ball Square). We recovered them in the driveway next door -- presumably they were ditched when the Kryptonite locks locking the front tires to the frame were discovered.

The fact that both were taken at once suggests to me that this was an operation by at least two people to sweep up unsecured bikes in the area.

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I've had two bikes stolen in the three years I've lived in Ball Sq. Neither was particularly well secured, but still, it sucks! I'm glad you recovered yours!

Next time, lock the bikes to each other, or better, to some fixed object.

And yet, when my bike was stolen off Garfield Street last month, it was locked twice: with one lock to my companion's bike, and with a second to a parking sign. Both bikes were gone when we returned 2 hours later.

I'm curious -- were the broken locks left around? (I just sent $20 to Kryptonite for theft protection, but if my bike is stolen, I will need to send them the broken lock.)

Maybe we can just borrow bikes and keep them in cages like the Berlin's "city bikes" half way down this link? (http://movingeurope.blogspot.com/)

Anyone know where I can find any ot those camera traps that cryptozoologists use?

Many SLR's will do "trap shooting" where it will trip the shutter as soon as something comes into focus (some you have to trick into doing this (like most of the canon dslrs) but it's possible to do). Probably a saner solution would be to use a web cam and run software that only saves sections of time when something significantly changes in the frame. The webcam is cheap and there's software to do it for free.

great! what about one with night vision or do have to consider providing a light source?

all webcams have night vision; the trick is that there's an infrared filter installed which must be removed. Then you have to illuminate the scene with infrared. It looks dark to thieves, but it is as bright as day for the webcam.

(for fun, cheap webcams can be used this way to make personal 'nightvision goggles')

a cheap webcam and GNU Motion (http://www.lavrsen.dk/twiki/bin/view/Motion/WebHome)
would do the trick. There are plenty of webcams designed for the home security and baby monitor markets that include IR lighting for night vision.

I have no idea if the pics you could get would be admissable evidence, though.

I don't know, if the cops know the kids, they will probably just beat the truth out of em....Well not really 'beat' but somehow convince them that they can't lie their way out of it this time.

While cameras alone probably won't help too much with crime, some of you in this blog were talking about Jane Jacobs and the "eyes on the streets" and "self policing" new urbanisms?.... Well, with their picture posted all over my neighborhood, emailed to all my neighbors and posted to the various Internet communities they might decide to stay away from my house and neighborhood... The possibilities abound.

Unless there is some easy cheap camera solution presents itself I will probably just continue talking about it though...

Thanks for that link BTW, I just started checking it out.

My husband's coworker set up a webcam to catch someone who had been taking money from his house (a dogwalker or someone like that, who had access). When he went to the cops with the tape they pretty much said "Dude! Thank you for doing our job for us!" and were eager to help him out with it.

I once caught a guy stealing my bike out of the locked, enclosed back porch of a house I lived in right by Tufts. I caught him heading down the driveway but given that he was, um, on my bike and I was on foot, he won that race. Bastard. The experience made my all paranoid and I took to looking out my windows excessively, and wouldn't you know, the very next night I caught someone I presume was the same guy about to cut the padlock off my neighbor's garage. Again, I didn't catch him, but I got to keep his burglaring tools that he had to ditch while I chased him as a prize.

One thing that has come to mind in reading all these True Crime posts -- I don't think Davis is being overrun by hoodlums; rather, I think their deeds are just being well-reported here. Sort of like the shark attacks of 2004--sharks didn't all of a sudden get hungrier that Summer, it was the press that had the feeding frenzy. So keep safe and keep it in perspective.

I was just thinking the same thing—more reports doesn't necessarily mean more crime. Reminds me of The Culture of Fear (http://www.bowlingforcolumbine.com/library/fear/index.php).

Eep, that's kind of scary. I keep my bike in the basement, but then I don't ride it every day.

Perhaps this weekend would be a good time to install the bike hooks that have been sitting on top of your breaker panel for the past year. Either that or we should install a big eyebolt or something in the porch to lock them to.

Can some of the men in the area patrol the neighborhood please?

What's wrong with you doing it too, cleanup? All you ever do is yowl about things that should be done for you and things you're entitled to. Here's a novel idea: pitch in.

Is there some reason that only men should do this?

Aha. Language-use there strongly suggests

cleanup_davissq is female.

Indeed, the very same cleanup who calls males machos and thugs, but expects them to protect her. ;-)

In a few recent threads "she" has hinted that she was and not denied it when others asserted that she was female. It would be an interesting project (and shouldn't be too horribly difficult) to actually unmask the person (anyone who thinks posting on LJ anonymously is a guarantee of anonymity needs to seriously reevaluate things).

Good point. For example,

mattlistener has her IP address from her posting above. Now we just need to find another user who posts from the same IP address, and we'll know who the account

cleanup_davissq is a sock puppet of.

Well, we really need to remember that this is only a hint and not guaranteed.

I thought that when LJ notified me of a reply, the mail header has LJ's IP address, not the original poster's.

I know a lot of us are curious to find out who cleanup_davissq might be and I know a lot of disagree with her/his comments - finding them reactionary and often offensive. Also, unfortunately the comments often send well meaning original posts off on a tangent (such as this one and the one yesterday about the Powderhouse Sq assault).

But I hope that all this talk of trying to track down who they are doesn't stop her from posting. I would hate to think that the Davis Sq community would in effect silence her opinions (seems very unlikely though) by suggesting that people try and track her down and discern her true identity.

Speaking of which, what are the community policies regarding anonymity? I know my username isn't very revealing and neither is my non-photo.

And lastly, I apologize for switching to strictly 'her' in the second paragraph, but I got tired of writing she/he, her/his, and her/him.

Yeah... I probably shouldn't have said what I said the way I said it. I don't so much object to CUDS saying what she's saying, just that it seems like she's hiding behind her anonymity so that she can be rude and abusive. I really don't want to silence her though. If what she has been saying is truly the way she feels, I want her to be able to say it.

Gosh, when a guy tried to steal my bicycle from my scrawy female self - right out of my hands - all I had to do was holler at him to "Get AWAY" and pull right back on the handlebars. He fell on his ass and his buddies laughed at him. I guess I'd have been SOL if that had happened in Davis, rather than Charlestown, huh.

For suspicious looking people? I think the best thing would be if everyone went out and enjoyed Davis at any hour of the eve. That would mean more less opportunity for criminals (since there'd be fewer unpopulated areas) and more fun for residents.

Just enjoy the place. Crimes are pretty darn rare here.

"Just enjoy the place. Crimes are pretty darn rare here."

I guess it depends on how you define crime. Have you ever read the police log in the Somerville Journal?

For a city only 4 1/2 SQ miles there is plenty of activity here.

4.5 sq miles is oftly misleading... Somerville is second only to NYC for population density in the US with a population of 75-80 thousand. It is urban and has an extremely wide demographic (educational, economic, racial, religious...) mix. I'm not saying I'm happy about it but having some crime is the nature of things in this world.

now if only we could convince the powers that be that somerville shouldn't close down at midnight, maybe we could actually do this

Here I am on patrol in Teele Square (http://www.orange44.com/respect_02.jpg). You can even see Tufts' hill in the background.

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Two bikes briefly stolen

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Respect ma vigilante authoritay