University Police has increased their surveillance of bicycle racks to crack down on bicycle thefts and potential thefts.
Ten arrests were made in April alone with help from the campus camera system. University Police Lieutenant Scott Brown said that, “last year we had 80 bicycle thefts on campus and 54 in the first four months of this year.”
He said there was a definite “upswing” in bike thefts this year.
University Police Chief Stan Skipworth said in a CSULB press release, “17 people have been arrested for theft or attempted theft of bicycles on campus since fall 2009.”
According to Brown, many of the arrests resulted from people on campus calling and alerting University Police if they suspected anything.
“There was a group of eight people who came here specifically to steal bikes and a resident assistant saw them and said ‘they look like they don’t belong here,’ ” Brown said.
“The camera operator was able to direct the officers to the people and we started asking questions and got them to admit what they were doing,” Brown said. “The cameras have played a role in the arrest of several people suspected of stealing bikes on the campus.”
Camera operators and police officers rely on experience in recognizing suspicious behavior to determine if something is “out of the ordinary,” Brown said.
“This provides us with the probable cause to make contact with the person and ask questions regarding what we saw and try and determine what is going on,” Brown said. “Sometimes this results in the discovery of a crime.”
Most bike thefts happen in areas where there are no cameras and where the least amount of patrolling occurs. Students who park their bikes in the residence halls are more likely to fall victim to bike theft because the bikes are left unattended overnight, Brown said.
According to Brown, bike thieves work quickly but students make it easy for them by using the cable locks to secure their bike to the racks instead of U-locks.
“You go out and spend a couple hundred dollars on a bike and spend five dollars on a lock and cable — it’s not going to work,” Brown said. “You have to get a U-lock. If it takes a second to cut it with bolt cutters, they’re going to take it.”
U-locks are metal locks in the shape of a “u” and take a longer time to cut through than cable or chain locks.
“I had a wire lock before, but my girlfriend had two bikes stolen from school so we both decided we’re going to get u-locks,” said Efrain Yakuta, a senior business management major.
Since changing to a U-lock, Yakuta said, “I don’t even worry about [my bike] anymore.”
Since the surveillance system does not overlook every single bike rack on campus, students should still take more precaution.
“I have the U-lock and the cable lock. I feel pretty safe because of the lock,” said Karina Rosales, computer engineering major.
“I have a friend who had the cable lock and [someone] stole her bike,” she said.
If a student’s bike does get stolen, there is more chance that the bike can be retrieved if it is registered with the University Police Department. According to Brown, registering a bike’s serial number is required in Long Beach and on campus. Registration is free.
“Our community service officers and student assistants were given ads to put on bikes that weren’t licensed, but not many people responded,” Brown said. “Then we sent them out there with the bike licenses and had them just stand there and wait.”
Many people register that way and it helped cut down on bike thefts at that time, Brown said.
However, students say bike thefts are going unnoticed by students and police.
“My bike was parked outside of the PE building and somebody messed with the (cable) lock, and when I came back I couldn’t twist the [lock],” said Morgan Moen, a senior economics major. “So I went home and got my pair of pliers and I worked at it for about 10 minutes to cut through it and not a single person asked me what I was doing.”
Moen said his sisters went to school in Santa Barbara and Santa Cruz and both had their bikes stolen several times until they started carrying the U-locks.
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