Cycling in Waterloo Region

[dtkvictim]

Yes, it pisses me off. As a low income person, my bicycle is my major transportation method, so having it stolen has a big effect on my finances. I had just spent over a $100 on a new rack and panniers for it when it got stolen.

That is really unfortunate, I don't think the police consider much the impact thefts have on people.

I'm sure there are many factors, such as this one, that go into few stolen goods being returned. I suspect the biggest is probably that if the police put their entire resources into recovering stolen goods we'd probably still only see something like 10% of items returned. It's just a difficult task... I wonder how much it would cost to track down and return all stolen goods vs just paying to replace them. That would be forgoing justice, but I also think most police see sending petty theft to the courts as a further waste of money, because there is no "justice" to be had there anyways.

FWIW, my neighbour's apartment was burgled, and had some amount of their things tracked down and returned.

On the topic of bikes: I've never had one stolen because I have the golden strategy of never leaving it outside (locked or otherwise). It is a frustratingly limiting strategy though...