One of Southwark’s top police officers has begged people to report bike thefts as soon as possible, pointing to a recent operation that saw seventeen bikes retrieved from a suspected thief.
Tom Cornish, the borough’s neighbourhood inspector, said there could be a perception that once a bike is stolen, it’s “not worth telling police.”
“But that’s not true,” he said. “Bikes are worth a huge amount now, much more than they used to be. The value is huge and the impact is huge.”
He asked for anyone whose bike is stolen to report it to police immediately after they notice, and also to the Bike Register website, which helps police track stolen bicycles.
Insp. Cornish pointed to a success story from last week (Wednesday, November 24), when an operation coordinated by a recently-recruited police constable led to officers carrying out three raids on three properties in the area around Blackfriars Road, recovering seventeen bikes.
Sixteen of the bikes were at one address, one was at the second and there were none at the third. All three addresses were associated with a single suspect.
Officers have not been able to charge the suspect yet, because they have to find the legitimate owners of the bikes in order to prove that they were stolen. Insp. Cornish said the bikes were probably burgled from communal areas of small developments, or from underground car parks.
“It’s very early days – it’s going to be quite a lot of work,” he said. “We’re only a few days in. In an ideal world we’d find several [bike owners]. One would be enough to charge one theft, five would be enough for five, and so on.
“I’m aware of the impact of the loss of these bikes will have on the owner, especially when taken through a burglary – this underlines the importance of reporting it, so we can reunite the owner with the bike and bring the person who took them to justice.”
Insp. Cornish was full of praise for the young officer who led the raids. “She’s new and she’s got great potential,” he said. “She took this on herself, coordinated it, and we were able to hit three addresses at the same time. She’s a very capable new recruit – I’m proud of what she’s done.”
If your bike is stolen, report it to the police here as soon as possible and register it as stolen at Bike Register.
Tom Cornish should be more concerned about the safety of women than a few stolen bikes. Have the police in Southwark got nothing better to do when attacks on women are rising in the borough. I assume they are insured and I expect they are all owned by lyrca clad males . Unbelievable and unacceptable