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Surrey Quays bike theft

Thieves use angle grinder to steal Trek bike locked outside busy shopping centre

Masked gang appeared unfazed by crowd of bystanders and made off from Surrey Quays shopping centre before the police arrived
by Dan Alexander
Sun, Nov 07, 2021 14:57
35

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.

Surrey Quays bike theft (Martin Pelant)

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.

Surrey Quays bike theft (Martin Pelant)

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.

Bike theft
Bike crime
Dan Alexander

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

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Captain Badger replied to Sriracha | 3 years ago
3 likes
Sriracha wrote:

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.

I'm actually more interested in any CJ system reducing the chances of reoffending. To me that's the KSI.

Victorian values such as monotonous compelled "work" (aka vengeance) have been shown again and again not to achieve that

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Sriracha replied to Captain Badger | 3 years ago
0 likes

You don't think that having to reimburse the value of the loss they caused would help prevent reoffending? The mailbag suggestion is only if they do not engage with productive community service. Of course, if they already have a job, then a simple attachment of earnings would do the same, but I'm assuming these guys don't already have paid work. So giving them the experience of regular work itself would be helpful to their development. I utterly fail to see any element of vengeance here.

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chrisonabike replied to Sriracha | 3 years ago
1 like

Sriracha wrote:

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.

That was my bit about proportionate. If they give probation the finger - and if you can find them again - then if you're going to bang 'em up for long enough that they can pay back for the bike by stitching mail bags, that's probably a sentence anyone would be happy with anyway. I wouldn't say it doesn't happen (given IPPs...) but I suspect we don't do the equivalent of the debtor's prison any more.

I actually think that for some of these who aren't quite committed to a career as a thief a medium-term sentence would give you the best hope of rehabilitation. Of course, that relies on their being a justice system which is designed to do that and a prison system capable of said rehabilitation...

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TempleOrion replied to chrisonabike | 3 years ago
1 like

No chance of that as long as the Tories remain in power, sadly 😔

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fuzzywuzzy replied to Sriracha | 3 years ago
0 likes

I'd prefer a mix of Squid Game & The Running Man, with the scrotes as the contestants, winner gets let off and TV revenue is used to reimburse the victims of the crimes.

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