Cycle Theft

Elect me, Nicky Massey for PCC for Cambridgeshire and Peterborough to allow me to continue the work against cycle theft and expand it by putting funding alongside partners to get a change to help prevent thefts.

Cycle theft is of huge concern in Cambridge city but also all over the county and in Peterborough also.  Cycle crime is an acquisitive crime, and it can often lead to further serious crimes including drug dealing.

The concern over the increasing number of cycle thefts highlighted by a Facebook page led to joint meetings with Camcycle and the police, and that led to a creation of a cycle crime prevention task group for Cambridge City that could be replicated across the county, and a separate task group looking at the issues of Cycle point at Cambridge Station.

The task group is made up of partners such as Camcycle, Greater Anglia, County council, City council officers, Cambridge University, Planning Officers, Brookgate, Anglia Ruskin.  

I know that the key to real prevention and action is true partnership working, especially with specialist groups such as Camcycle who are a valued partner and their input and feedback is critical to make sure that the right actions are being taken. My whole Ethos in community safety is about crime prevention and real and true partnership working and that includes the community in that partnership which for this task group Camcycle brings.

The work is constantly in progress and to date our achievements are :

·       An audit of the city’s cycle stands, details of condition noted. Data overlaid for cycle crime hotspots and then fed into the GCP work for locations for secure cycle areas.  Info collected such as potential for CCTV increased lighting and other interventions to stop an area being a hot spot.

·       The plan will be to have a city council standard of cycle stand.

·       A change to way that cycle crime is reported via the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough police website.

·      There is an issue with police capacity being able to view all recorded cycle crime theft CCTV. In working closely with CamCycle we have come up with a solution of using volunteers trained and screened by the police to be able to pull data from city council CCTV hub of cycle thefts where we have the data of date and time. 

·      A letter written by myself is being sent to those shops that are known to sell poor quality locks asking them to work with us on a project that declares the standard of locks on sale according to how strong they are so the public can make an informed choice.
Much like stores like Halfords and Decathlon does already. 

·      The issue of a good standard of lock is one that is often down to cost, and so I have already started a campaign of “asks” asking for stores, companies, public to donate good quality locks to our food hubs for those that need them most and has already had some responses. 

·      Partnership working with CamCycle on others on advertising how to correctly lock your bike through leaflets and other media. 

·      I have also written to companies such as Ebay, Facebook Marketplace, Gumtree asking them to make it a policy that anyone who sells a second hand bike MUST show the bike frame number to allow people to check if the bike has been stolen. This will also encourage the public to register their bikes and dissuade from selling stolen bikes in this way. Gumtree has already responded positively, and we look forward to more engagement with them very soon, a meeting is planned for within the next few months.

·      There is  work to integrate Cambridge Station cycle point /cycle park CCTV with our CCTV so it can be monitored live by our operatives. This work is important as our operatives will be able to follow on screen potential thieves.

·      There are other interventions happening at cycle point to make it a safer place to leave your bicycle.

·      I have also put out an ask to those companies that collect abandoned bikes to retain some of them for them county to be used at Food hubs for those that need them.

The police have had some great successes in tackling proficient cycle thieves and that work is still ongoing.  By working together with our communities and partners we can achieve so much more.