Bellingham bike thefts still a problem as Facebook group continues to spread the word

Bellingham is largely known as a bike-friendly town, with wide bike lanes and multiple routes available to riders around the city.

As the city’s bicycle community continues to grow, the number of thefts in the city increases as well.

According to Bellingham Police Department Outreach Officer Jon Knutsen, there have been 372 bikes stolen in the city during the past year. This data was tracked from May 28, 2019, to 2020.

Knutsen recently published this data in a private Facebook group named the “Bellingham Stolen Bicycle Group,” which was created in August 2013.

The data break down how the bikes were secured or stored when stolen: 152 (41%) were locked, almost all with cables; 135 (36%) were unlocked and mostly left in fenced yards, or on porches and balconies.

Fifty bikes (13%) were stolen from buildings, usually in garages, sheds and storage units. The remaining 10% of those stolen (36) were from unknown locations, without a lock mentioned in the report.

Of the 372 bikes stolen, only 41% were reported to the police with a serial number. Knowing the serial number on your bike is vital information, Knutsen said in his Facebook post.

“I read one report where a known bike thief was stopped by a proactive officer on a stolen bike, the officer ran the serial number and got a “hit” through the national database,” the post wrote. “The thief was arrested (again) and the bike was returned to the owner. Potentially it’s that simple. But had the serial number not been on file, the thief would have been allowed to ride away even though the officer *knew* in his gut the bike was stolen.”

Knutsen told The Bellingham Herald that his department mostly does reactive work when it comes to bike thefts rather than being proactive.

“There are several officers that have really gotten a feel for how the bike thefts work,” Knutsen said. “Those are some proactive steps that were taken but I would say, to be honest, most of it is just like burglaries and vehicle prowls, most of the time we are reacting to those crimes that have already happened.

“We’re approaching the bike theft issue with trying to educate people to make it more difficult because we cannot possibly be patrolling proactively in a way that’s going to prevent somebody from taking your bike if its an easy target.”

Of those 372 bikes stolen, 86 (23%) were recovered in the past year by the Bellingham Police Department.

“It’s definitely a problem,” Knutsen said about the thefts. “Bike theft happens to have a really good community of people that are trying to do something about it. The more you pay attention to any one crime, you start to notice it all the time.”

One member of the Bellingham bike community who is trying to do something about the thefts is Cory Blackwood, who created the “Bellingham Stolen Bicycle Group.”

“I moved here from St. Louis 17 years ago mostly because this is one of the best bike communities that I am aware of,” Blackwood said. “There’s really tight-knit communities in Minneapolis and even Lincoln, Nebraska, but this one is pretty extraordinary and that’s what drew me here.”

Blackwood created the page for members of the community to share with each other when a bike is stolen to help keep an eye out in hopes of finding it. Although the group is private, anyone can apply to join.

Although he believes the bike theft problem in Bellingham is similar demographically to other West Coast cities such as Santa Cruz and Portland, Blackwood believes there are way too many thefts and calls it a huge problem.

“It’s pretty rampant here,” Blackwood said. “I think a lot of the criminals that steal know this is a big bike community and people have very expensive bikes, so it’s an easy target.”

Staci May, owner of Earl’s Bike Shop in Bellingham, said she initially saw an improvement in Bellingham’s bike theft problem.

“For a while, I thought we were seeing fewer bike thefts and things were improving,” May said. “I think that we certainly are moving in a more positive direction. Although recently, we’ve seen kind of an increase or at least a more obvious presence of bike thieves.

“There’s basically a chop shop on D Street in plain sight.”

Beyond buying a lock for your bike, May provided online resources to help cyclists keep track of their bikes. Like remembering your serial number to report to the police, websites such as Bike Index and 529 Garage serve as registries for new or used bikes.

This story was originally published June 15, 2020 at 5:00 AM.