Is your law enforcement agency looking for a modern tool to help fight bike theft?
The Bike Index is a massive, modern, community-driven database of bicycle ownership and stolen bicycle data. Bike Index has built the single largest open database of bicycle registrations and stolen bike listings in the US, with over 1,300,000 bikes on file and hundreds of partner organizations.
We've done so by working with partners across all sectors - bike theft victims, bike shops, riders organizations, and law enforcement - and we would love to add your organization to the list.
Many police departments and cities don't have a bike registry, or they use a costly, time-consuming, paper-based system that only works in one city. When a bike is registered with Bike Index, its information - including detailed descriptions, serial numbers, photographs, and component information - is made available to our hundreds of partners across the US. This wide reach lets us track stolen bikes when they move from state to state, city to city - even across national borders.
Bike Index is web based, so there's no app or software to install - it works on any computer or smartphone. Law enforcement can use Bike Index both on their office or 'in the field'. Furthermore, the Bike Index is often faster, easier, and more accurate than existing police databases, because our listings include so many unique details about the bikes we track.
We even have many instances of law enforcement recovering bikes with no serial number on file, thanks to the photos and data provided by the owners - details that are typically lost in traditional police databases. We also work with officers who encounter large numbers of bikes in criminal situations - chop shops, drug houses, stolen-goods fences - and want to bulk-identify many bikes at once. In many situations, the bikes are the most 'minor' item involved in a crime, but they are more likely to traced back to a victim, thanks to the Bike Index registration.
One of the largest problems we face are several problematic online marketplaces (that we're sure your departments are already more than familiar with) where bike thieves sell stolen goods with impunity. Our online 'spotters' find a continuous stream of bikes for sale on these websites and apps, and Bike Index works with both victims and law enforcement to recover stolen bikes being sold online whenever possible. It's a great example of the community stepping up to monitor services that refuse to police themselves.
Bike Index also provides simple tools to let your staff or volunteers mass-register bikes at events like summer rides, community meetings, or bike races. Local volunteers using Bike Index tools are a great way to boost registration and participation in your city, quickly and cost effectively, without complexity or paper shuffling.
Don't just take our word for it, though - many other city and police departments are already using Bike Index, including:
- Seattle PD
- King County Sheriff’s Office
- Portland Police Bureau
- San Francisco PD
- Bend, OR PD
- Berkeley CA police
- LAPD West
- City of Pittsburgh, CA
… and many, many more.
We also invite you to read our monthly recovery stories to read about the thousands of bikes we've helped recover - they're a great way to get the 'big picture' on how the Bike Index protects bikes.
Our technology is leaps and bounds ahead of the alternatives, and our community is top-notch when it comes to protecting bikes.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://bikeindex.org/news/bike-index-for-law-enforcement