Unraveling the Decline in Boulder’s Bike Thefts
In the city of Boulder, people think about bikes a lot. Whether that be racing your carbon fiber, graphite, 40000 dollar bike down the hill and through the scenic landscapes, or you are thinking about stealing one of those rides, biking is a core part of the culture of the city and the culture of criminality as well. I for one have lost two bikes to this beautiful city and its angle grinder wielding criminals. As for the facts, or at least what is reported, the number of reported bike thefts has seen a significant and consistent decrease. I felt like today, I wanted to explore the trends, see what’s working or not working for the police department and the city and decide if this decline we see is telling the whole story.
Boulder, known for its strong cycling culture and outdoor lifestyle, has long grappled with the issue of bike thefts. For years, these incidents were more than just a nuisance; they reflected deeper concerns about property safety and urban crime. However, starting from 2020, the narrative began to change. Data collected from the Boulder Police Department presents a compelling picture: bike thefts have been on a steady decline, dropping from 2,292 incidents in 2020 to 937 in 2023. This decline, especially in a city where bikes are a primary mode of transport for many, is not only intriguing but demands a thorough exploration.
The motivation for this analysis goes beyond mere curiosity. I set out to improve on the Boulder bike theft map that the police department has put together, and not only did I drastically improve their map, but I found some really interesting outliers and trends. So these questions arise, does the decline in thefts tell the whole story? Here is a snapshot of what piqued my interest
Through looking at the map and looking through the data, we can see some pretty big heists, which at this point are getting ridiculous. Not only did I find out that 72000 dollar bikes exist, but they also are still prone to theft. Was this a failure of a city and police department? What about a failure of personal ownership and protection. These are the questions that arose. Even though the trend is going down, things like this are still happening.
So Is this supposed decrease a result of enhanced security measures, such as improved bike locks or increased surveillance? Could it be attributed to more effective policing strategies or community-driven initiatives that foster greater awareness and collective responsibility? Or are there other socio-economic factors at play, reshaping the landscape of urban crime and safety?
I took to the web to find what the PD and the city say has worked best for them.
“One of the best examples of this approach is in Boulder, CO, where the Boulder Police Department, local bike shops, and the University of Colorado Boulder have all started using Bike Index to register and recover bikes together.”
Discussed here is a collaborative approach to curbing bike thefts that has yielded notable results, just showing the power of community and technology over anything else when it comes to crime prevention. A prime example of this synergy is the partnership between the Boulder Police Department, local bike shops, and the University of Colorado Boulder, which have collectively adopted the Bike Index for registering and recovering bicycles. This might explain a lot about the success of bike theft prevention, the fact that the community is key.
“Facebook Marketplace is a breeding ground of bike thieves right now. It’s not just Craigslist anymore,” says Michael Trujillo, a BPD Officer. “Essentially, you’re going to want to put out an APB on your bike.”
An APB is essentially a report put out for a missing thing. So the police are more or less recommending preventive measures for bike owners rather than doing some sort of advanced surveillance and patrolling tactic, and I would have to say it’s probably smart to push these measures.
“We find bikes all the time. We find bikes abandoned, — — But if they’re not registered, and they’re not reported stolen, then we can’t do anything about it.”
So, it would seem that putting out a police report and having your bike registered in the Bike Index is the best way to protect your bike. Boulder has stated that even though bikes are constantly recovered, only 6% of them make it back to the owners, which brings up a whole new rabbit hole.
Where do these bikes they “find all the time” end up? And how has the city treated these bike thefts that are essentially grand theft auto at this point? All in all, based on what we have seen, I think Boulder and the community have been able to fight back against bike theft. Through their preventative measures and Bike Index, but it still feels like the police are maybe not doing enough, projecting the responsibility of their duty to protect, on the civilian population. I know for a fact the perceived threat to bikes has only grown in the psyche of Boulderites.
Shown in figure 4, we can see a trend that I think says something interesting about the problem, we can see here that even though the number of bikes stolen has been lower the last year or so, the average price has remained high, especially if we were to bar the outlier in 2022. So given this, it would still signal to me that enough isn’t being done, and thieves are starting to target more expensive bikes on average, so having something nice makes you even more of a target.
Another facet of these trends I notice is that these things seems to negatively correlated, you can see that when # bikes stolen are high, average prices are low, visa-versa. When the number of bike thefts is high, it might indicate that thieves are targeting a larger quantity of more accessible, potentially lower-value bikes. This could be due to easier access, lower risk, or a broader market for cheaper bikes. Conversely, when fewer bikes are stolen, it might suggest a shift in focus to higher-value bikes, which could be riskier to steal but offer a higher reward per theft. I think that the threat of enforcement may have windows or some sort of seasonality.
This visual shows when bike thefts are at their peak, the middle months are where we see the most bike thefts. This is due to a multitude of reasons. For one, we see a meteoric spike in March that continues into April. This signals the warmer months and the beginning of the biking season. There are just way more bikes out on the roads and ready to be taken. We see these trends pretty steadily continue and even increase to July being the peak month. I actually found a Finnish data article that supports this as well.
“The number of bicycle-related crimes would seem to increase almost five-fold compared to the winter months. We receive roughly 500 bicycle-related claims a month between April and October,” says Hanna Hartikainen, head of insurance at OP bank in Finland.
This indicates that this is a global trend in colder countries or climates. Police really need to intensify their measures in these months to minimize loss of property
Another thing I noticed with this visual is the steep drop off in August. What happens every year in Boulder around August? School starts back of course, which raises some interesting questions. I would say that students being back certainly has something to do with rates lowering so drastically, I would say that students become the new targets, or maybe, total conjecture, but the police presence is higher when school starts so it is harder to steal bikes. Also the total value even more drastically drops, could this suggest that bikes that students bring are much cheaper thus the value drops? I would be interested in seeing the bike crime data on campus and seeing if that spike is seen, especially in the beginning of school to see if my claims would be supported.
All in all, I would say through all of my findings, I can tell you the best way to lose a bike and never see it again.
1). Don’t register your bike through the Bike Index.
2). Have an obscenely expensive bike.
3). Leave it out sometime in the summer, preferably July.
Other than that, I think I found it really interesting to see the trends of bike thefts, but as I imagined that overall downward trend just wasn’t the whole story. Bike theft is still a large issue, and if you have a nice one I would pay extra attention to how you protect it. Seeing how the biking community comes together to inform each other of the best practices was really inspiring, but something didn’t sit right for me with how the police pushed the blame onto people being bad at protecting bikes. Thieves are getting smarter and more capable, and I think the Police Force has to continue innovating to counteract them. The Bike Index seems like a good start, but only that. Hopefully this issue is made much less of one by improvements in enforcement, and indexing technology.
Works Cited
International Police Mountain Bike Association (IPMBA). “Boulder, CO: Presenting the Unified Front Needed to Reduce Bike Theft.” Retrieved from IPMBA.
https://ipmba.org/blog/comments/boulder-co-presenting-the-unified-front-needed-to-reduce-bike-theft
Family1st. “How Police Recover Stolen Bikes.” Retrieved from Family1st.
Bike Magazine. “Boulder, Colorado: Stolen Bikes.” Retrieved from BikeMag.https://www.bikemag.com/news/boulder-colorado-stolen-bikes
OP Ryhmä. “April to October is the Season of Bicycle Thefts — The Summer Period Stands Out in OP’s Non-Life Insurance Claims Data.” Retrieved from Cision News.
