Motorcycle Theft
| Author | Allan Robinson |
| Date | 01 October 1996 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0032258X9606900413 |
| Published date | 01 October 1996 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
ALLAN ROBINSON, MBE
MOTORCYCLE THEFT
Gangs of motorcycle thieves "trawl" the suburbs of London in vans
looking for N registered, low mileage 160 mph motorcycles of over
500 cc to steal. Like the fishing fleets in the Western Approaches, the
trawling vans are from foreign parts: Newcastle, Manchester, Liverpool
and the industrial Midlands.
Detective Inspector Keith Brayne and bike theft expert Ken German,
both from the Metropolitan Police Stolen Vehicle Squad, and the motor
cycle industry's "Theft in Action Group" know exactly what happens to
the near new stolen bikes that vanish up the motorways to back street
kerbside breakers at £6,000 untaxable "profit"
per
van load:
"Exotic modem hyper-sport motorcycles are expensive fashion items,
mostly made in Japan, with spare parts that are so frighteningly
expensive at full list price that owners will buy parts stripped from
stolen bikes so that they do not have to make ruinous purchases at
full retail prices."
High prices are due to the strong Japanese yen versus a weak pound, and
importers who keep new product price down but load the spare parts to
make essential profits.
Vehicle investigation units in all 43 police forces nationwide are
looking at a fully international wave of motorcycle theft that the Police
Research Group analysis reveals took 49,000 motorcycles off our streets
last year with a UK recovery rate of only 29
per
cent. Almost 1,000
bikes a week are stolen, stripped and their parts sold at high untaxed
profit. Those who trawl the streets are getting richer by the minute. With
new "hyper-sports" machines averaging £10,000 apiece, the police meet
and arrest thieves who have become very rich very quickly.
The rest of the motorcycling fraternity suffers high insurance rates
in consequence. The only beneficiary is the huge market in anti-theft
devices for motorcycles. But it is in the avoidance of the high insurance
rates that ordinary enthusiastic riders come unstuck. They buy the
cheapest possible insurance cover and when their expensive, plastic
shelled "crotch rockets" have glass fibre handlebars and carbon fibre
exhaust systems reduced to shredded junk in a damaging spill, they turn
to the men who steal and strip matching machines - often to a precise
matching order for model and colour. Cosmetic bodywork components
in highly coloured plastic comprise much of the thieves' untraceable
component business but the police also know where the one-pieceengine
and gearbox units they call "the lump" are going.
Motorcycle road racing has around 4,000 participants in the UK and
perhaps 20,000 throughout all of Europe. The white hot heat of
October 1996 The Police Journal
367
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