The Spectator The independent student newspaper of Valdosta State University
There is no denying that there is an increase in bike use on campus. With the increase in student body and the difficulty in finding a parking spot, students are turning to the use of bikes to get around campus and get to campus from off-campus housing.
With the increase in bikes on and around campus, bike theft is on the rise.
Each week The Spectator receives police reports from the VSUPD. The No. 1 crime on each report: bike theft.
This leads to several questions. The first is what do you, the bike thieves, get from stealing a college student’s bike?
Do you seriously have nothing else to do at night than steal a bike? Let’s think about this.
You would rather stay awake late at night, dodge the police and students, break the lock and then steal the bike?
Please, get a life. Get a hobby like studying, video games, television, a girlfriend or boyfriend or better yet, just go to sleep.
The second question that comes from all the bike theft is when will the VSUPD step in and catch someone stealing a bike?
Each week the VSUPD police reports show that three to four, sometimes more, bikes are stolen a week. Yet there are never arrests for bike theft in the reports.
Does that mean VDUPD cannot catch the bike thieves? I hope this is not the case. As students we would like to see people be held accountable for the bike thefts.
It is not like the bikes being stolen on campus are being stolen in broad daylight. There is no way we expect bike thieves to break a lock on a bike with thousands of students walking
the campus. Obviously these bikes are being stolen at night.
So with the No. 1 crime being on campus bike theft, what is VSUPD going to do in order to stop this useless and immature crime and save college students money?
May we suggest cameras around the bike racks or an increase in security?
Obviously bike theft seems like a crime that may not be important, but with so many students having bikes stolen, it is time for the VSUPD to step up and do something and for the childish thieves to stop.
This editorial was written by Ed Hooper (ephooper@valdosta.edu) and it expresses the opinion of the entire editorial staff.
Seems a bit bashful kind of remark towards the Campus Police.
But in the end, that’s pretty much the nail on the head, despite being a total rant. The VSUPD seem to never be around at the right time. Not to hate on the police for the school, but every time something serious is going on they seem to be off worrying about someone not really being harmful or doing anything wrong to begin with. The things that seriously bother me about them though is when they park their cars DIRECTLY in front of Hopper (not that it matters for me, I live off campus now) nearly every night and get late night Hopper dining. Great for them I’m sure. But if you are off duty, get rid of the car and get rid of the uniform.
On the other side of things, I slightly blame some students. Doesn’t the VSUPD have a GPS tracking system for people that register his or her bicycle? When I was a freshman I was noted of this, but never had a bike so I am unsure if this is something going on or not. If it does exist, then I can only blame each and every student who has had their bike stolen for not getting it tracked. Sure it seems freaky as though big brother is watching, but I could care less if the police were tracking a bike sitting in front of palms, or eventually finding it somewhere far off campus where it shouldn’t be in the middle of the night. It would become extremely obvious however when that student calls up VSUPD and reports their stolen bike.
I suppose that this isn’t good enough though.
I extremely agree on the bike parking situation, and that is exactly the reason why I do not want a bike.
We are in the UK working with Police Forces to reduce cycle crime. We provide a RFID tag that goes inside the bike, register it on a National database http://www.immobilise.com When police forces check the details (serial number/tag number) on their Police National Computer, if not reported stolen but it is registered on the immobilise website, then the registered keepers details will come up. This is being used by ALL police force in the UK. Over 600,000 bikes are stolen each year, the police recover thousands but cannot identify the owner because of poor descriptions and the lack of frame or identifying numbers. There are 29 million items of property on this database with over 1.5 million bikes. Bike theft is still occurring but the tagged bikes are 10 times less likely to be stolen. We encourage people to register their property- tagged or not to give the police a better chance of identifying the owner.
The same database is available in the USA http://www.immobilize.net Why not register your bike and any other irtem of property you have such as mobile phones.
Why not get in contact with the VDUPD, tell them about our scheme and ask them to make contact. We have tagged over 100,000 bikes in the last 4 years and it is growing.
Why not get the University to get everyone to register their bikes.
Regards
John Macintyre