I miraculously recovered my mountain bike from the police station last week, more than six weeks after it had been confiscated from some railings by Trafalgar Square in London. I never expected to see it again – and it was great to be reunited with it. But I'm still none the wiser as to why it was taken in the first place, and I am out of pocket to the tune of £40, having had to replace the lock that the police presumably destroyed.
The bike was taken at the start of April, while I was at the theatre. When I returned to pick up my wheels, all that was left was a note informing me that any bikes left on the railings in question had been taken to Belgravia police station. But when I turned up to collect it two weeks later (having been on holiday in the meantime), there was no record of any bicycles being picked up that night, and no sign of it in Belgravia's bike graveyard underneath the station.
Having taken all my details, I was promised that my case would be passed on to the sergeant. But, three weeks later, I'd heard nothing. Given that Belgravia police station very rarely answers the phone, I took to calling the Metropolitan Police press office – who treated me with even greater contempt.
As a journalist who never writes about serious crime, my calls to the Met press office are always brushed off by some rude PR, whose tone implies that I should stop wasting their time and let them get on with solving murders. Sure, bike theft is not exactly on a par with terrorism or knife crime, but that doesn't mean it's irrelevant. All I wanted to know was what law it is that gives the police the right to remove a locked bike from a public place. But no one seemed to have the answer.
Then, as luck would have it, my 143rd call to Belgravia was answered by someone helpful. He sounded genuinely concerned that there was no record of my bike, and took it upon himself to find it. Half an hour later he rang back, saying it had turned up in the bike graveyard – without a saddle.
And that's how I finally found it. The saddle was tossed on the floor somewhere over the other side of the car park, but the bike was otherwise undamaged. I guess I'll never know what happened to it in those six weeks. Perhaps it was stolen by a policeman and then returned after I began to make enquiries. Or perhaps it's been sitting in the back of some police van, travelling the streets of London.
But I can't help wondering how many other people have run into similar police incompetence. All those bikes in the graveyard must belong to someone, yet some look like they've been down there for years.
My best guess is that most of these bikes – including mine – were confiscated under the Prevention of Terrorism Act, which apparently gives the police the right to do what they like in the name of fighting terrorism. I'll be filing a complaint to the IPCC, but I doubt they'll even bother to write back to me.
James, glad to hear you recovered your bike, though I'm seething at the attitude you experienced from the police. One question, or thought, are not most of the bikes in the graveyard recovered stolen bikes?
Posted by: Dave Pettit | Thursday, 29 May 2008 at 04:00 PM
The police removed my bike from some railings in Highbury last year. I was able to recover it the following day with the lock still attached. They had used an angle grinder to cut through the railings rather than damage my lock. Apparently they had seen some kids trying to steal it and decided to remove it. I found Holloway police very pleasant to deal with and was glad they had rescued my bike. I am very doubtful that I would have got it back if I hadn't found their note stuck to the railings though.
Posted by: Rick | Thursday, 29 May 2008 at 05:11 PM
You did well to get your bike returned. My son had his bike stolen at University. He reported it to the police. A week later they phoned him at 2 a.m. to say that the bike was recovered. He went to the police station. They then asked him for the frame number. Having only purchased the bike a week earlier he hadn't noted the number down and they refused to release it to him. Their logic defies explanation.
Posted by: Wiradanuprojo | Thursday, 29 May 2008 at 10:05 PM
A friend had his bike stolen from outside our office. The act was caught on CV. A colleague spotted it in the local cash convertors. The ID the thief had presented to Cash Converters was, they agreed, pretty dodgy. My mate didn't know the frame number and they wouldn't give him his bike back!
Posted by: Duncan | Friday, 30 May 2008 at 10:14 AM
Dear James
Was the picture of the bike tied up to railings supplied by the Independent photo library or is it your bike and this is your method of securing it? If so, how come that I've never read your tale of woe after one or other or both wheels where stolen? Surely the safest way of securing a bike (advised by the police) is to loop a u-lock round a solid object and the frame and through the back wheel and detached front wheel, or else with a flexible cable or another u-lock preserving the front wheel from theft? I learned the hard way. Trundling a single wheel bike four miles home is not fun!
I enjoy your column and I'm glad that the Independent went green and ditched the Motoring supplement but kept us cyclists. I look forward to a diatribe against car-parks disguised as cycle lanes, to complaints about Westminster Council's useless doric column bike stands and to mockery of those perfectly straight roads which remind one every few years that this is a cycle route until you reach an intersection where there is no indication which way to go. There's one such in south London where the road divides into three.
Peter Forster N4
Posted by: Peter Forster | Monday, 02 June 2008 at 06:56 AM
Dear James,
while I don't know where exactly you left your bike, it would probably have fallen foul of the Whitehall/Parliament Square cycle parking exclusion zone.
This has been in force for some time, since the mid-80s, apparently. It covers Parliament Square and Whitehall, although I have heard that sometimes police
have strayed beyond its official boundaries and have impounded bikes outside the zone.
Bikes can usually be recovered from Charing Cross police station. Top tip:
If you present the police with a receipt for (a) new lock(s) to replace the one(s) that they broke, they will refund you when you're recovering your bike. I
don't know if it's still worth your while trying that after having recovered it, but if you have time and you can find your sympathetic contact again you may
well succeed.
The police justify the zone as an anti-terrorism measure. The fact that bicycle bombs are typically hidden in bags and panniers rather than in actual bike frames, as has been pointed out to the police many times, has not made a difference to the policy. Even if cycle parking were re-permitted, unattended bags and panniers of course shouldn't be.
Its legal status is unclear--I don't know whether anyone has recently done any digging. I think the occasional campaigner who wanted to pick up the issue
became frustrated that the police apparently used to refuse to discuss it. There was an article in the London Cyclist in around 1996 when someone attempted to
explore the issue, but didn't get very far.
There have been exceptions, such as at various editions of the Tour of Britain, when hundreds of spectators left their bikes around the area while watching the
London criterium stage. There wouldn't have been anywhere near enough police around to enforce the policy and they would have been met with a massive outcry,
anyway.
Glad you got your bike back!
Happy cycling,
Oliver
LCC
Posted by: Oliver | Monday, 02 June 2008 at 03:42 PM