Hot wheels

One morning in early May, Brennan Percy stepped away from work at Greenline Cycles to enjoy his morning coffee outside when he noticed something suspicious. A block away, a gloved man was eyeing a bike chained to a pole in front of the Chico City Council chambers, and before Percy could even rally his co-workers (“It’s going down out here!” he recalls shouting), the man produced a pair of bolt cutters from his backpack, clipped the lock, and sped away on the stolen bike.

“It was broad daylight and the plaza was full of people; there were people everywhere,” Percy said during an interview at the downtown bike shop. “I picked up the lock and walked it straight over to [Mayor] Mark Sorensen’s office and left it on his secretary’s desk with a note saying, ‘This is a big issue, this was done right in front of your office and this shows how little respect these thieves have for Chico.’”

At the June 2 Chico City Council meeting, Percy and other concerned citizens affiliated with the Facebook group Chico Stolen Bike set a figurative lock down in front of the entire council. A number of speakers appeared during the open comment portion of the meeting to declare that Chico’s long-running bicycle theft problem has grown to epidemic proportions in recent months. They further claimed some of the thefts are committed by organized rings, the Chico Police Department has done little to curb the problem and the issue has evolved beyond theft to include violent crime.

“People are getting threatened, assaulted, followed and vandalized,” said David Albrecht, one of the group’s members. “The problem is escalating; it’s not getting any better.”

Chico Stolen Bike was founded by Robert Jones about a year ago to organize community members because of a perceived lack of action regarding bike thefts by the CPD, and has grown to include nearly 600 members. Those members are encouraged to post pictures of stolen bikes to aid in their recovery, as well as locations of suspected chop shops and pictures and video of suspicious activity or crimes in progress.

There is also ample discussion about ways to address the issue, and Albrecht recently conducted a survey about bike theft concerns in Chico, the results of which were submitted to the council June 2. Based on the survey, Albrecht said bike thefts cost Chicoans upward of $1 million annually.

Percy elaborated on many of the points made at the City Council meeting during a recent interview.

“Bike theft is an issue in every city, and it’s certainly nothing new here in Chico.” Percy has had two bikes stolen since moving here five years ago. “But about three months ago it started picking up significantly, and about a month and a half ago it just exploded.”

Percy said the same week he witnessed the daring daylight theft in front of City Council chambers, people began reporting five to seven stolen bikes each week to Greenline Cycles, and the numbers have not let up since. And he noted bikes are also disappearing from garages in upscale neighborhoods like California Park.

“The police are underfunded and can’t do anything to stop it, and the criminals know this and are taking advantage of it,” he said.

For Percy, one of the more shocking revelations of the survey, which was distributed to hundreds of recipients in person and online, was the amount of people who reported they feel unsafe on Chico’s bike paths (only about 27 percent reported feeling “very safe” or “somewhat safe,” 25 percent were uncertain, and 48 percent reported feeling “not very safe” or “extremely unsafe”). Percy noted there is a “known chop shop” located under a bridge on the Midway bike path, and related an anecdote reported to the Facebook group about a teenage boy being assaulted and his bike stolen on another local path.

“Chico is labeling itself a bike town and has invested a lot of money into building and painting bike lanes and other improvements to make it a bike-friendly community, but at the same time people don’t feel safe on the bike paths,” he said. “That’s pretty counterproductive.”

Some people posting comments on the Facebook page have pointed fingers toward the homeless community, but Percy said “there’s a lot of hands at work here.” From personal observations and information they’ve gathered about bike theft in other cities, Percy and other group members believe that stolen bikes are equivalent to drugs and cash as currency among Chico’s criminal transient element, and that there also are more sophisticated thieves at work.

Percy said there’s no simple solution, but his group is willing to work with police and city officials to address the problem: “We’re thinking we need to do a lot of different things and hit it from a lot of different angles, like organize cleanups under bridges, get people going to council meetings and meet with police.”

Future plans aside, Percy said the group has already accomplished its main goal—returning bikes to their rightful owners—several times over. He said the site has been used to locate about a dozen bikes in the last six months, three of which he found and reclaimed himself.

The CPD says it’s already taking action to stem bike thievery, but police and city officials are mum on the details. After Percy delivered the cut lock to Sorensen’s desk in early May, he said he received a voicemail from the mayor saying that CPD was working on the issue, but that details couldn’t be discussed until the program rolls out this summer. City Manager Mark Orme echoed this when Councilwoman Reanette Fillmer alluded to a police program in the works at the June 2 meeting.

“Unfortunately, the confidentiality of the specifics of that program are such that I can’t speak directly to it,” Orme said. “But you’re absolutely right in that there is a solution that’s being implemented, and I think you’ll see that roll out in the near future.”