Cycling UK hails "clever" policing after bait bicycle used to track down £130,000 bike theft gang in one shift

Cycling UK has urged more police forces to consider the "substantial results" that can be yielded from "sensible, clever policing" to tackle bike theft, without needing "massive intelligence or money". The comments come after City of London Police managed to track down a bike theft gang in a single shift, the thieves found with a huge collection of stolen bicycles totalling £130,000 in value, the haul believed to be the biggest of its kind in the force's history.

Last week we reported that four more men had been jailed for their role in the organised crime operation which saw the prolific theft of bicycles in the City of London during 2020, police ultimately bringing the gang down in November of that year by tracking a bait bicycle, left in the area with the intention of getting it stolen so officers could track the thieves back to their base.

Cycling UK's head of policy, Duncan Dollimore, has encouraged more police forces to "sit up and take notice" of their London colleagues' success.

"I accept policing concerns about resources and priorities, but this wasn't an operation that needed massive intelligence or money," he told road.cc. "It required some sensible, clever policing with a reasonable amount of resources — but it yielded some pretty substantial results."

"Bikes in the office, bikes in the toilet, bikes hanging up on rails, bikes stacked up everywhere"

Celebrating one of his force's more successful day's work, Detective Constable Matt Cooper this week spoke to the Daily Mail and recalled the moment they tracked the bait bike back to a plant hire business in east London where £130,000 worth of stolen bikes were discovered.

"I was just shocked," he said. "We had tracked one stolen bike to a plant hire business in East London — and found about 60 more. Bikes in the office, bikes in the toilet, bikes hanging up on rails, bikes stacked up everywhere. There was about £130,000 worth. It was hard to take in.

"We bought a relatively high-value bike and left it locked up in Rood Lane, off Fenchurch Street. This is an area targeted by bike thieves — but there is also a lot of CCTV coverage. We left it there in the morning and it was stolen by thieves, who cut through the lock with an angle grinder, at 2.30pm."

Once the gang had been tracked to a warehouse on a business estate in Tower Hamlets, two members were arrested at 3.12pm on the same day, with stolen bikes and mobile phones seized.

"It took three of our biggest police vehicles to transport all the bikes to Bishopsgate police station — and colleagues in the property store are still emailing me to ask when they can go," the detective constable continued.

"The CCTV footage shows some of them arriving four or five times a day, from first thing in the morning to last thing at night, each time with a new bike. And it shows Baldwin [Louey Baldwin, the mastermind behind the operation who was last week jailed for two years and nine months] handing out angle grinders complete with new blades and new batteries, as well as cash. The thieves knew there was a safe place where they could sell stolen bikes and that there was always money available."

In total, 11 people have now been sentenced for their role in the thefts, City of London Police explaining that reported bicycle thefts in the part of the city referred to as the Square Mile fell from 68 per month at the height of the gang's spree in August 2020 to seven in January 2021.

That number stabilised at around 19 bike thefts per month in 2023, a level the police force says is considerably lower than when the gang was in operation, with 20 of the stolen bikes now returned to their owners.

Last month, the Liberal Democrats warned that bike theft has been effectively "decriminalised" as analysis of Home Office data found nine in 10 cases reported to the police since 2019 had gone unsolved.

Of all bike thefts reported to the police since 2019, 89 per cent (more than 365,000) have gone unsolved, the analysis of Home Office data showed, pointing to more than eight reported bike thefts an hour and 200 per day going unsolved in England and Wales over the past four years.

"Years of neglect under this Conservative government have emboldened criminals and left frontline police officers without the resources they need to investigate crimes like bike theft properly. The government needs to restore community policing where police are visible in their neighbourhoods and can focus on solving local crimes," the party's home affairs spokesperson Alistair Carmichael said.