“If it’s bike theft you need to expect to solve your own crimes”: Journalist tracks down stolen cargo bike after “overstretched” police told him “that’s up to you” and “we do not attend when it’s a block of flats”

For the second time in as many weeks, a cyclist has highlighted the ineffectiveness and apparent apathy of the UK’s police when it comes to investigating bike theft, after he was forced to track down and seize his family’s stolen cargo bike, using an Apple AirTag, when officers effectively “washed their hands” of the matter and told him it was “up to you”.

Jim Waterson, a former media editor at the Guardian who now runs London Centric, was investigating what he describes as the “plague of bike theft in the capital”, which included some ill-fated attempts to interview convicted bike thieves, when – as fate would have it – his family’s electric cargo bike was stolen from outside his home.

Waterson, incidentally, had just bought a cheap bike which he planned to fit with a specialist tracker and use as “bait” for would-be thieves, but instead “accidentally jumped the gun”, with his family’s actual bike nicked as the journalist “dashed” in for a Team meeting.

“The battery-powered bike can carry two children across London faster than public transport and is far cheaper than owning a car. It has transformed my life,” Waterson wrote on London Centric.

“But, as the thieves who must have been watching my house knew, it is not a cheap bit of a kit. And by the time I went back outside, it was gone.”

The former Buzzfeed political editor then immediately phoned the Metropolitan Police to report the theft, and told them that the bike was fitted with an Apple AirTag.

While not originally designed for tracking bicycles, Apple AirTags were quickly adopted by bike theft-conscious cyclists, and work by connecting to nearby iPhones via Bluetooth, which act as beacons, triangulating the Air Tag’s position and hopefully leading you to it – and your stolen bike.

> Apple AirTags - Can you use them to track your bike?

“It immediately became apparent that the Met Police, weighed down on a Friday evening with a huge number of other calls, did not want to get involved,” Waterson continued.

“They issued me with an incident number and told me that I would get a call back within two days – a call I have yet to receive. When I said an AirTag was tracking the bike and it was still in my local area, they advised to call back if I tracked it to a precise address.”

Thanks to the AirTag, the journalist was duly able to work out where his bike was being stored, in one corner of a mid-sized block of flats close to his home.

After being let inside by a “friendly resident”, Waterson phoned the police, as had been suggested to him, and requested some support in order to retrieve his bike.

“Is it a block of flats? We do not attend when it’s a block of flats,” the Met phone operator allegedly told Waterson, before explaining that the police “could not spare the time trying to retrieve stolen goods in a building with multiple floors”.

Aware that attempting to retrieve the bike on his own may lead to a dangerous situation, Waterson asked the operator: “Would you attend if there was an emergency?”

After confirming that the police would, the journalist explained that he would attempt to recover the bike on his own, to which the operator replied: “That’s up to you”.

“I’m terribly sorry, but that’s my bicycle”

After three hours of “staking out the same block of flats” and asking residents for help, Waterson said that he was about to give up, accepting that “I was never going to see the family bike again”, when the AirTag alerted him that the bike was on the move – first to another block of flats and then to a car park, 500 metres away.

“I sprinted down the road, into a dark car park, and saw my family bicycle leaning against a wall,” he said. “Next to it was a man, dressed all in black with his face covered in a ski mask, standing by a black hatchback car with the boot open. He appeared to be getting ready to load the bicycle into the boot.

“High on adrenaline and shaken by the situation, I blurted out the words: ‘I’m terribly sorry, but that’s my bicycle.’

“The man looked understandably shocked. He replied: ‘Oh yeah? Well… I’m just going to my mate’s house upstairs.’

“‘I’ll take this, then’, I said, putting my hand on the bike more boldly than I expected. Seconds later he jumped into the car’s driver seat and sped away, leaving me with my bike — albeit lacking a front wheel.”

The next day, a resident who lives in a nearby flat told Waterson that she saw his cargo bike being dragged to the car park minutes before he showed up, at which point the thief noticed the AirTag and removed it, eventually leading to it ending up at a local recycling centre.

> “We made it difficult for the police to ignore”: Cyclist leads police to serial bike thief in DIY sting operation – after spotting stolen bike on Gumtree

“In a parallel universe, I’m still waiting for the Met Police’s follow-up call, and my bike is long gone in the back of that car, possibly to be sold on Facebook Marketplace or resprayed and sent abroad,” he continued.

Reflecting on the theft on social media, Waterson said: “The Met Police, short on resources, won’t attend even if you know which block of flats contains your stolen bike.

“In the end I got incredibly lucky and got (most of) my bike back, by spending five hours staking out local streets and buildings. Others won’t have as much luck.

“But if it’s cycle theft you probably need to expect to solve your own crimes.”

> Hospital staff left “p***** off” after bike thefts become “almost a weekly thing”, with lack of CCTV making it “perfect for thieves”

Speaking to Waterson, the London Cycling Campaign’s Simon Munk explained that theft is one of the biggest issues holding back the growth of cycling in the capital.

“Around a quarter of people who have their bike stolen in London don’t go on to buy another bike. It massively impacts the kinds of people who cycle,” Munk said.

The campaigner also argued that bike theft is “clearly not a priority” for the “overstretched” Met, but pointed out that: “It’s not that they don’t care. Their take is just that they don’t have any resources for this at the moment.”

Munk also noted that some of the best work has been done by the City of London police, who’ve had high-profile success with a GPS-enabled bait bike in London’s Square Mile, which allows them to track down the storage units used by gangs.

“The Dutch have low levels of bike theft because they tend to ride very cheap simple bikes and leave them unlocked,” he continued.

“Because there’s so many and everyone owns a bike you can’t resell it for high levels of money. In the UK cycling skews towards middle-aged men with high income and you’re riding for miles in hostile areas of London in terms of route safety. They often own flasher road bikes, so that skews very different from the cycling culture in other European cities.”

> Warning that bike theft has been "decriminalised" as stats show 89% of reported cases unsolved

In response to Waterson’s solo bike recovery story, a spokesperson for the Met said: “We understand the impact that theft and robbery can have on victims – it’s an invasive and sometimes violent crime - and we’re committed to protecting Londoners and tackling this issue as we make the capital safer.

“Met officers are targeting resources to hotspot areas, such as Westminster, Lambeth, and Newham, with increased patrols and plain clothes officers which deter criminals and make officers more visibly available to members of the community. 

“We continue to use data and technology to build intelligence and track stolen items to target offenders. We encourage people to report as soon as possible whenever they have been a victim of theft, so officers can investigate swiftly.”

As noted above, Waterson’s story isn’t the only one in recent weeks to feature a DIY bike recovery operation on the part of cyclists underwhelmed by the police response to theft.

Last week, we reported that another London-based cyclist – whose bike was stolen from the communal hallway of his block of flats, before immediately appearing on online marketplace Gumtree – made sure their case was “difficult to ignore” for the police, by tracking down the culprit within 48 hours using Gumtree and guiding officers right to his doorstep, leading to an arrest and criminal charge.