there’s a picture he took of himself with the bike, that should be enough. plus a detailed list of every part on there should be easy to do.
That’s exactly what I thought after posting that question. Took a picture of the serial number of my frame and of me with the bike I have here, since I realized I have no receipt or anything like that.
This is how it works. A relation of mine got pulled over for dui and ended up with alcohol in stadium.
confession o’clock:
so there are a shitload of bikes locked up around campus here that are obviously abandoned. apparently the school just collects and throws 'em out right now, if they’ve been there for like a year. i was thinking i’d start a club in cooperation with the police where we liberate abandoned bikes and fix them up and give them to students.
i told my room mate about this and he got all hyped up on the idea because he needed a bike. long story short, he took justice into his own hands and went out and totally stole a bike that had been sitting out all summer.
now, this bike had been locked up in one place for a long time and the tires were flat, etc. but also it was also a $1000ish trek, not some shitty mountain bike. i’m not convinced that the dude hadn’t just locked it up for the summer. i didn’t really know what to do because i didn’t have any proof that it wasn’t abandoned, and i’m the only one my room mate told and so the police suddenly showed up asking questions he’d damn well know it was me. i’ve talked to him about how i don’t think it was abandoned but he won’t hear it, so i haven’t really been able to figure out what to do about that.
edit: oh also it was never reported stolen according to the campus police blotter (which i check because i am constantly doing other illegal shit) so even if i did report him, they wouldn’t even know who to return it to? sort of a fucked up situation.
bikes that are abandoned and not locked up are fair game in my book. call me a bad guy, but i was raised to respect my property, and i just get sick when i see abandoned huffys and diamondback mountainbikes sitting around. so many shitty walmart bikes on campus just waiting to get ridden away.
my backyard used to be full of junked salvaged mountain bikes. my roommate and i used to make brakeless singlespeed freewheel ghetto bikes out of them to ride to parties drunk and ditch in an apartment complex.
I commend you for the effort and not flipping out and yelling crap like “ITS JUST LEFT WE ARE TRYING TO BE CONSTRUCTIVE” even if they cops don’t appretiate it.
Next time though get a carjack and go at night or make up a story about losing your keys months ago thats why all the parts are striped and how you have tried to contact the city about it but they won’t help.
this is how i was arrested my first time…ah memories. me and a friend wanted to strip the good bits from a very abandoned bike. we went with some tools to pull of the good bits and the bike just FELL of the rail. so we started walking away with it to strip it elsewhere. some Uni students stopped us and gave us shit about it not being our bike blah blah and fucking took it from us (we were like 14). the cops stopped them and they said that they were taking it back to the station and pointed to us as we skated away. they arrested us and gave us a bunch of lectures and Dad came to get us. he gave more lectures about stealing blah blah. abandoned shit is fair game, just don’t get caught.
Soundandmotion – The school I attended has a bike co-op and they have a deal with the security/grounds people that when bikes are officially removed they’re given to the co-op to be fixed up and given back out. You may want to discuss something like this. Or, at the very least, talk to someone there and ask if you can somehow be a part of the removal and get just a few of the better bikes to fix up and redistribute (if it’s only you and your friend).
There is a trek mtb that has been locked where I lock my bike for over a year with a small cable lock, I am tempted to take it every day.
[quote=“soundandmotion”]blah blah blah…
i didn’t really know what to do because i didn’t have any proof that it wasn’t abandoned, and i’m the only one my room mate told and so the police suddenly showed up asking questions he’d damn well know it was me. i’ve talked to him about how i don’t think it was abandoned but he won’t hear it, so i haven’t really been able to figure out what to do about that.
edit: oh also it was never reported stolen according to the campus police blotter (which i check because i am constantly doing other illegal shit) so even if i did report him, they wouldn’t even know who to return it to? sort of a fucked up situation.[/quote]
don’t rat. end of story.
You wanna hear a great bike arrest story?
I just got back from a meeting with my probation officer. He’s a nice guy and we get along, but mainly we joke about why I’m there. I’m on probation because I got in a verbal argument with a driver while on the road and he attacked me with his car. He pulled me down by my shoulder strap as we were going 20-25mph and then sped up to get away. Instead of falling down and letting him get away I held onto the car and was dragged 70 feet down the road. I managed to open the door and pull myself up mostly off the ground, leaving only my feet to scrape against the ground. Both shoes and socks were pulled off, a hole was ground into my drop bars from being dragged across pavement at 30mph, I lost a lot of skin on my legs, and I almost broke my arm again.
The guy who assaulted me is a 6 time felon for assault. I was given reckless driving on a bicycle, a fully made-up charge, and he was given ANOTHER assault charge. Fast forward a few months and we went to court. After failing to appear to court the first time he was charged with contempt of court. Clearly, he’s a stand up citizen. Oh but wait, the judge dropped all charges on him including contempt. She fined me 300 dollars, gave me 40 hours of community service, and 3 months probation.
my probation officer basically just laughs every time I come in. he said this is easily the weirdest case he’s ever heard. the judge said the same thing, as did the lawyers in court.
EDIT: Oh, and it’s such a bogus charge no one call tell me if I’m going to get points on my drivers license. Not even the judge knows.
You should hunt down and assault the judge, then not show up for court and say ‘but your honor, people get away with this all the time’ and not get charged.
I cant tell you how angry I was that first day. It took everything I had not to freak out. What made it a little better but also a little worse was when I showed up to intake at the probation office and told my story to the clerks one of them immediately knew which judge I had. Every time I met someone new and had to tell my story they were able to correctly guess which judge I had. I guess she’s that big of a bitch.
what the fuck is her problem? why did you not appeal this?
because it’s just a pain in the ass.
I got arrested for taking a bike out of a big dumpster. (oh sorry, I guess it was a large recycling bin)
just got outta court. my case was deviated, so i’m not going to court and instead given 50 hours community service and an essay to write by january 21st. the funny thing was, after showing my new p.o. my black flag tattoo and explained my love of music, explained why the bike was abandoned in exhaustive detail listed my job as a bike mechanic (which is true), she agreed with me from an ethical standpoint but said she had to do what the law described. all in all not too bad, right now im still really psyched to be out of jail. i also got my bike back from amtrak.
to 666pack: because i pissed clean, im no longer on probation, and am just paying restitution on that arrest.
to ben (ha haaaa): i produced my receipt from iro, since i bought the bike not too long ago. in the meantime they ran my serial number and saw that my bike wasn’t stolen (fucking duhhh)
yeah this is exactly what i was planning on starting.
also one thing to know about that story is that he’s my room mate and not my friend and he’s an awful person. since i’ve been talking to him about how i don’t think it’s abandoned, his only reaction was “i’d better spraypaint it so the owner doesn’t catch me” which pretty much makes him a straight up, no excuses bike thief in my mind. even though i don’t think i can do anything which will help anybody at this point, i still feel sort of fucked up about it.
I’m honestly not sure why people feel that repurposing CLEARLY ABANDONED things is theft. It makes no sense to me. Maybe abandoned things belong to the state, but that’s debatable unless it’s written somewhere (which it most likely is) and if so is pretty questionable. So yeah, sorry about your luck, dude. I’ve never had any serious run-ins with the cops (just a speeding ticket) but if something like that happened to me I’d probably feel the exact same way a lot of you do about police. The system is very messed up when people with big attitudes and complexes and very little training and rationality are allowed to tell rational people what they should be doing and how. It just reminds me of the story on Dave Moulton’s blog when he talks about in the 50’s when he was waiting for a girl on a street corner or something, and a cop told him to move and he didn’t so the cop just straight-up punched him in the face. Ridiculous!
Thanks for sharing, and I wouldn’t wish this on anyone who didn’t deserve it.
soundandmotion: steal the bike from him and donate it to a bike co-op