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news
Thieves use angle grinder to steal Trek bike locked outside busy shopping centre
A gang of bike thieves cut through a lock outside Surrey Quays shopping centre in Rotherhithe, south-east London, yesterday taking a bike as shocked onlookers rang the police.
road.cc reader Martin arrived when the four thieves were already in the process of stealing the bicycle, an act which only took a couple of minutes. Three of them had covered their faces with balaclavas and waited on bikes and scooters while the main offender used an angle grinder to cut through the Trek e-bike's lock.
There was a large crowd stood filming and phoning the police. Martin said he thought about intervening further but was not sure how violent the gang would be, or if they were carrying weapons. In the video, he can be heard asking "is that your bike?" without reply.
Instead he "continued filming. I focused on the one I could get a clear face of. I just hope someone might recognise them and they get arrested. I never would have thought that something like this could happen in broad daylight with an angle grinder in front of all the people.
"There were quite a few people walking by and some of them observing from a distance. Another bystander was already on the phone with the police that arrived after 15 minutes. The shopping centre security is unfortunately located at the other entrance."
By the time the police arrived the owner of the bike had also returned and Martin passed on the footage to both.
It is not the first time a gang of bike thieves using angle grinders has been caught on camera. Last year, footage emerged on social media of a bike thief lunging a tool at a bystander who tried to intervene as the suspect cut the lock on a Brompton in Hackney.
In July a London cyclist confronted motorbike thieves using a similar tool to cut through locks.
Dan is the road.cc news editor and joined in 2020 having previously written about nearly every other sport under the sun for the Express, and the weird and wonderful world of non-league football for The Non-League Paper. Dan has been at road.cc for four years and mainly writes news and tech articles as well as the occasional feature. He has hopefully kept you entertained on the live blog too.
Never fast enough to take things on the bike too seriously, when he's not working you'll find him exploring the south of England by two wheels at a leisurely weekend pace, or enjoying his favourite Scottish roads when visiting family. Sometimes he'll even load up the bags and ride up the whole way, he's a bit strange like that.
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35 comments
Risky strategy, but you can run up behind the thief and kick the battery end of the grinder - the disc will shatter and they won't be able to finish getting through the lock...
After reading the replies an idea occurs. The main problem (apart from the lack of effective deterrents) seems to be the weight of a decent lock. Would it be possible to build a decent locking system into the bike stand. Initial idea was have a key in the lock, take it with you when you've locked the bike and leave it in when you've finished with it. A little thought throws up problems with this approach but there must be some way of doing it, may be a deposit sytem which is forfeited if the key is not returned.
My personal solution is to have a cheap bike for when I need to leave it unattended and a light-ish d lock and a cable lock.
Good idea. Maybe it could lock/unlock electronically with a phone app, or credit card. Even choosing a six digit PIN would be decent. The electronics would of course be another attack surface, but the rack itself could be a pretty hard target if it were say 40 mm diameter solid steel.
I don't want to victim blame but why was the bike locked with a single D lock? And not a strong looking one either. On the rare occasion I lock my ebike outside a supermarket I use an abus wheel lock, a chain, a mini D Hiplok and the bike has an Abus motion alarm which beeps like an angry banshee if the bike is moved. You have to protect yourself properly - these little s++ts don't like hard work and the more deterrent the harder it is.
How hard would it be for ebike manufacturers to step up to the plate? A key switch which when locked means you are pedalling against the motor should not be too difficult to implement. Or something. Car manufacturers went through the same a few decades ago.
Bosch ebikes (and maybe others, I don't know) allow you to code the display unit to the motor, so the bike won't operate without that specific unit. You remove the display and take it with you when you lock the bike. Success of that strategy does rather rely on the thieves knowing it’s a thing though.
Unfortunately, removing the head unit doesn't lock the bike, it just stops the motor from working.
AFAIK, if you have s removable head unit, you register it with Bosch. You can replace the head unit, but the details have to match that on the Bosch database for it to be unlocked.
The human element isn't bypassed, just made smaller.
I've also found that removing the battery as well as locking up helps.
But you are victim blaming. How many locks should you have to carry with you when using your bike? If we want people to use bikes rather than cars as everyday transport it has to be a practical option. I always use a good u-lock but I'm not fooling myself that it will stop some scrote with an angle grinder.
More than you can cut through using a dewalt XR brushless grinder with a 4Ah battery on a single charge. If not you've only yourself to blame....
Unfortunately there are lots of thieves about. Unfortunately one has to counter their efforts with even more effort - and in this case it means using multiple locks to secure the bike. As pointed out, the display on Bosch powered bikes can be removed - thus disabling the motor. The best deterrent is the abus wheel lock - which stops the wheel from turning (and the bike from being ridden away) and is attached to the frame and impossible to remove without wrecking the bike. Of course it would be great to just pop into the shops and lean the bike outside against the wall. But that's not where things are at the moment - so carry two good locks.
I have a new Merida eBike which when used for shopping is locked with the biggest, fattest available Kryptonite D lock, a Kryptonite disc lock and integrated Abus wheel lock also leave the bike in highest gear and of course remove the computer.
Often wondered whether a small cheap padlock locked around the upper chain line would prevent thieves making off with the bike. They could not pedal it without first cutting off the lock, but an angle grinder would be no use with the lock just dangling around the chain. A second person would need to volunteer to hold the padlock whilst the other wielded the angle grinder, so the smaller the padlock the better really. Unless they were tooled up with bolt croppers as well as the angle grinder, they might just give up. In any case they probably would overlook the padlock until it made its presence known as they attempted to pedal away.
Woukdnt stop them carrying it away on a moped.
Not even slightly; You can break those in a couple of seconds with two small spanners.
This scales up further than you might expect, too - it's entirely possible to destroy the padlocks on some gates using a pair of spanners, not that I'd know anything about that cough cough.
Sure, I've seen the YouTube video too. Now try that trick when the padlock is around the chain. A small padlock, so the hasp only just closes around the chain. Try not to disable the chain.
Besides, you're forgetting this; they'd have to come with two suitable spanners. That's one more chance in your favour, for very little cost or burden on your part.
Very crass. I have no real idea about the law enforcement situation where this happened but the fact that gangs dare resort to this type of thing tells me more than listening to long speeches of Boris, Priti or the head of the local constabulary.
I decided to forget about locks, simply avoid to the max leaving my bike outside + took out theft insurance, I hope that Trek's owner did the same.
As an aside, where I live (Brussels) a couple of years ago 2 guys (one on a moped) pulled the same stunt. The one on the bike got away, mr moped caught a 9 mm bullet from the owner, who saw it happening from his store. Problem was, the thief got shot.....while he was riding away. Owner had a firearms license but obviously the law frowns on people firing at fleeing criminals on a busy street. Don't know how that one turned out, except for mr moped who was pronounced dead at the scene.
Some good shooting with a pistol at a moving target. Chapeau.
It wouldn't happen in the UK. The firearms laws here are much stricter. Shooting a thief would result in very heavy penalties. The Wild West approach is allowed in some US states, Texas in particular.
There was a story in the news last week, some guy pulled up onto the wrong driveway (lost, according to family members) and the homeowner shot and killed him.
Yep, I'm glad I don't live in the US. Baltimore has 44 times the murder rate of London/head of population, while Chicago has 38 times the murder rate. It's worth remembering that.
Circulate those stills around the local secondary schools, teachers will know who he is, even if he left (or was expelled) a few years ago.
I'm pretty sure his face will be known to the police too.
The cops know all these arseholes on their patches. It's getting judicial action that is difficult, what with the fucking Tories having defunded the justice system for the past decade.
What about the tories that don't have 6+ kids? Aren't they equally as responsible as the fucking ones?
More to do with do gooder lefties who don't want these people punished adequately, they know perfectly well a slap on the wrist and community service awaits , they are laughing at us all .
Like all those do gooder lefties who voted to put aside a mere thirty day suspension for bringing our government into disrepute.
Hey, wait a minute! They weren't left wing!
Hmm...
Pretty sure that even so the bike will have been flogged off instantly, and finding the thief result at best in a convictuion on probabtion and nothing for the bike owner.
Maybe some community work should be paid - direct to the injured party. Scrote sentenced to enough hours to pay back the loss. Plus damages etc.
Sounds good but not convinced it's workable. Upstanding businessmen and cabinet ministers of all ideologies are always complaining that imposing large shares of tax won't work as people will simply divert some of their energies to avoiding the tax. I suspect the same goes for these budding young entrepreneurs who are such devotees of degregulation. I bet they're not even paying tax on those stolen bikes!
So I think such a scheme would effectively be the government paying me the money. Doubtful that any proportionate methods would motivate them to labour for someone they've just ripped off.
I was under the impression that community service work imposed as part of a sentence was not voluntary. So if the scrotes fail to complete their alotted work, to the proper standard, then give them work under more closely supervised conditions, like sewing mail bags, etc. Obviously lower value work will require more hours to pay off their debt.
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