The local ABC news station has a good story about Clovis PD taking bike theft seriously. Due to an increase in bike thefts, one of which I talked about here, the city is pushing to get people to register their bike serial numbers with the city so it can be easier to recover them.
Since the beginning of the year, 100 bikes have been reported stolen and even though 30 have been recovered, a very small percentage have been returned to their owners.
That’s because many people don’t know their bike’s serial numbers. The new program launched by the Clovis Police Department allows people to register their bikes with the police department so they can be more easily returned.
Sounds good. It’s a low cost program that could potentially yield good results for folks who manage to get their bikes back.
An odd omission from the report is that, from what I understand, Clovis still has a law on the books requiring that all bikes be registered (with a fee). Fortunately, that law hasn’t been enforced in years, and it’s entirely possible the current PD doesn’t even realize that law exists.
Here is what that old law entails.
Last I heard, cycling groups were trying to get that law repealed, which may have happened in the past year but I didn’t hear about it.
The current push for registration does not involve fees. You can register online.
Anyway, in the title of the post, I mention that profiling is included. What do I mean by that? Well, the ABC news broadcast has a very unfortunate quote from a Clovis PD rep.
“If we stop somebody and they’re on a bicycle and it doesn’t look like maybe they should have that bicycle, we can run the serial number of the bike and then we can see that its owned by someone else. And then we can contact that person and see if that bike is supposed to be with that person,” Calli Biaggi of the Clovis Police Department said.
That sounds exactly like a healthy dosage of profiling and it shouldn’t be something that department is boasting about doing.
Unless we’re talking about an adult on a bike intended for a small child, how exactly can an officer determine that “it doesn’t look like maybe they should have that bicycle”? We all know what’s actually going on here, and it’s wrong.
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If you were expecting a post on the final Gettysburg bike lane community meeting, sadly I got held up and could not make it in time. The same news channel has a segment on the “controversy”.
That segment can be found here
Honestly, looks like I didn’t miss much. Same people making ridiculous claims such as trying to argue that a bike lane actually makes it more difficult to back out of a driveway. The good news is, it looks like the councilman will be voting yes. Doesn’t explain why he felt the need to stir up controversy that didn’t exist, but hopefully all the delays will be coming to an end on Thursday.
This cruiser is what happens when you mix a classical-styled bicycle with a vibrant color pallet Hermosa Beach.
beach cruiser bikes
So your saying if you just purchased a nice 2-3 thousand dollar bike and it was successully returned, due to what you call " profiling " you would be upset? Not me. Id buy them some donuts. I own two very expensive road bikes and i pray if they ever ge stolen that an officer will do exactly that. Profile.