By Matt Collette
Swarms of bikes are disappearing this summer, many into the hands of teenagers.
Some local teenagers are coming to campus and stealing bikes – 18 have been stolen so far this year, compared with 22 this time last year, said Jim Ferrier, associate director of public safety for the Northeastern University Division of Public Safety (NUPD). The thieves are mostly teenagers from surrounding neighborhoods who work in small teams: some serve as lookouts while others use bolt-cutters to snap a cable lock, Ferrier said.
But stealing isn’t the only way bikes are getting into the hands of local teens. Earlier this month, NUPD officers delivered 35 bikes to two charities that serve Boston teens: the Labour’eacute; Center in South Boston and the Teen Center at St. Peter’s in Dorchester. The bikes had been in NUPD’s possession for at least a year; officers had found them unchained on campus or picked them up during attempted thefts, but the bicycles were never claimed by their owners, Ferrier said.
‘After a year goes by and nobody claims them, we find a new home for them,’ said Ferrier, who said the department picks different charities each year to receive the bikes, as well as other unclaimed possessions, like calculators.
Paolo De Barros, director of the Teen Center at St. Peter’s, said he can now start a bike club with the bikes donated by NUPD.
‘We’d been waiting a long to time to start a club, but we didn’t have the bikes,’ he said.
St. Peter’s has received 17 bikes from Northeastern so far, they are used by teens between the ages of 13 and 19 to go on trips throughout the city, he said.
Of the bikes stolen on campus this summer, all disappeared during warmer months: one in April, five in May, five in June and seven so far this month. Half were stolen from the busiest areas on campus: five from the West Village Quad and three from outside Snell Library. And all but one were secured using cable locks, chain locks or no lock at all, Ferrier said.
Andy LeClair, a junior computer science major, said his bike was stolen in October from a rack outside West Village C, where he had secured it with a chain lock. The bike was a new 2007 Gary Fisher hybrid he bought for $500.
‘I really don’t know what happened,’ LeClair said. He said he had left the residence hall late at night to grab a bite to eat, and believed his bike was still on the rack. He returned to the building, and when he left again at 3:30 a.m. to head to Willis Hall, where he lives, his bike was gone, he said. A cut chain was all that remained.
‘I was so pissed,’ LeClair said. ‘I was just kind of really angry for a bit. I picked up the lock and was really defeated.’
As he walked back to his residence hall, LeClair said he threw the lock and chain at the side of his building in frustration. He called NUPD a few days later – school work kept him from acting sooner, he said – but NUPD was unable to recover the bike.
Ferrier said NUPD recommends bike owners use the rigid U-shaped locks to secure their bikes, because they are not vulnerable to bolt cutters, a thief’s most common tool of choice.
Four people have been arrested by NUPD this year for stealing bikes, Ferrier said. Those arrests led to the recovery of six bikes; all remain unclaimed at NUPD’s Columbus Avenue headquarters.
When the university receives a report of a stolen bike, their investigation includes cross-checking their inventory of recovered bikes as well as those in Boston Police possession. But most bikes are not recovered, Ferrier said.
‘A lot are stolen by kids who need to upgrade the bike they already own,’ Ferrier said, ‘and others are stolen by professional thieves for selling.’
LeClair said that since his bike was stolen, he’s been through a few different ones, starting small with one his mom bought at a yard sale and slowly working back up to better ones.
‘Hell no, I got a Kryptonite lock,’ he said, when asked if he still uses the same kind of chain lock. ‘I learned my lesson the hard way. It was one expensive lesson.’
