@futurebird @MarkHoltom depends where you are. Village post office and one strong lock is ample. There's not really any lock big enough in parts of London. I reckon they'd find a way to nick a bike buried in concrete in some boroughs!

@mjr @MarkHoltom

NYPD laughs in the face of people who have their bike stolen. I've always said if they wanted to be better liked all they'd need to do is a few stings every year to catch prolific bike thieves but they can't be bothered and so those of us who bike live in the wild wild west.

@futurebird @mjr @MarkHoltom while it's not surprising, I'm still a wee surprised the NYC cops don't prioritize it at all. My understanding is that bike theft often helps fund a lot of other (much more headline grabbing) criminal activity. I can't find any of the articles that I recall having read on it, but I know in the Bay Area that's the case, and that there are major police ops on stolen bikes.

@notoriousiptg @mjr @MarkHoltom

This might sound absurdly petty, but for a variety of reasons NYPD dislikes people who ride bikes. They constantly have these absurd little traffic stops for bikes near the bridges that come in to Manhattan from the Bronx and Brooklyn and hold up everyone exiting the bridge looking for someone who ran a red light. Or they give everyone tickets even if you didn’t run a red light.

@notoriousiptg @mjr @MarkHoltom

This might sound absurdly petty, but for a variety of reasons NYPD dislikes people who ride bikes. They constantly have these absurd little traffic stops for bikes near the bridges that come in to Manhattan from the Bronx and Brooklyn and hold up everyone exiting the bridge looking for someone who ran a red light. Or they give everyone tickets even if you didn’t run a red light.

@futurebird @notoriousiptg @mjr @MarkHoltom Having worked there I can say that often those stops come after cyclists are killed - let’s be real here: mashed into paste - by buses and trucks and cars. There have been many campaigns to save cyclists that start with enforcement. I can understand as a cyclist myself why we think other priorities (like for example making NYMTA bus drivers actually stop at lights) would seem higher but I never once heard the sentiment that NYPD doesn’t like cyclists. It’s not all a plot.

@fuzztech @notoriousiptg @mjr @MarkHoltom

IDK when I was a messenger I saw another delivery rider get hit by a car. It was bad. Two of us chased the car and got their plates. We were both eyewitnesses to this kid getting maimed and we hung around to talk to the police. They didn’t even write down the plate number I gave them. I gave the number to the kid as the put him in the ambulance. Tried another cop who said “this isn’t a crime”

@futurebird @notoriousiptg @mjr @MarkHoltom Yeah there are assholes in every profession. No accounting for incompetence. But I never heard anything even hinting at what you were fearing was unspoken or spoken policy. I likely would’ve. And I did hear lots about trying to reduce cyclist and pedestrian deaths. So {shrug}

@fuzztech @notoriousiptg @mjr @MarkHoltom

I grew up in a suburb and when I first moved to NYC I found the general ire for NYPD perplexing. The most charitable reading is that they still are acting as if the city hasn’t changed since the 70s — NYPD act as if they are an underfunded city service tasked with policing an impossibly violent and chaotic city.

@fuzztech @notoriousiptg @mjr @MarkHoltom

But in reality they are exceptionally well funded and your average New Yorker is rather docile and grew up watching shows that said cops are heroes.

And one might stay that way were it not for one bad experience after another. I’ve spoken to police some 15 times over 20 years living here and always gone in trying to be helpful — in half of these cases it was frankly scary.