The Hermiston Police Department has been finding a number of abandoned bikes in town lately, many mostly likely stolen and later dumped off somewhere.
Most of the bikes found have not been reported stolen.
“We have had very little success reuniting people with these bikes,” said Capt. Travis Eynon, who in an HPD Facebook post outlined the likely scenario as to how the bikes were found, as well as how to prevent your bike from being stolen.
Capt. Travis Eynon has some advice for bike owners
“Most often, these are stolen bikes,” Eynon write, “What usually happens is some ne’er-do-well wants to get from point A to point B (maybe across town). Ne’er-do-wells are also not well known to have much ambition for walking. If people are locking their cars and not leaving the keys in them, cars a little harder to steal. But bikes, those are a different story. You don’t have to walk around much to find one in a yard, carport or beside a home that is not locked up. It’s a quick, quiet process to be on your way with the power of two wheels. The Ne’er-do-wells don’t necessarily want the responsibility of the care and feeding of owning a bike so when they get close to where they’re going, they usually just leave it in someone else’s yard or leaning against their fence. The new recipient knows it is not their bike and wants to do the right thing so they call the police. We come and check the serial number, usually with negative results. So, we check the bike description among our recently reported stolen bicycles (which are actually way fewer than the amount of recovered bicycles). We take the bike and lock it in our bicycle storage where they sit until there is no more room. They are then disposed of in bulk.”
Eynon offered the following advice to all bike owners:
- Lock up your bikes when you’re not riding them.
- Record your bicycle’s serial number. This can be done quickly and easily with a cell phone camera.
- Report your stolen bikes when they are stolen. They may not be recovered but at least we will have a record of the theft, a description and hopefully a serial number. If we have the serial number, the stolen bike will be entered into a national data base so even if the bike is taken away to another part of the country and the police run the serial number, we will get the hit.
- Register your bike. You can come into the police department and register your bike for free. Then your serial number is entered into our local data base. Then even if it hasn’t yet been reported stolen and we run the number, we will know who is supposed to have that bike.
