Officers reunite victim with stolen bicycle thanks to bike marking scheme

Officers were able to reunite a cyclist with her stolen bicycle, thanks to our free bike marking scheme.

On Tuesday (7 March), at around 12.50pm, police were called to report a bicycle had been stolen from outside of the Leisure Centre in Peace Prospect. The bicycle had been secured with a chain, which had been cut through.

In response to an increase in reports of thefts of bicycles in the area, Watford Safer Neighbourhood Team officers planned a covert operation yesterday morning (Wednesday 8 March), with the support of Operation Scorpion plain clothed officers. Within minutes, a man was arrested on suspicion of attempted theft and taken to police custody.

Following the arrest, officers proceeded to conduct a Section 18 search of an address, where they found and recovered a number of bicycles that were suspected to have been stolen – including the one that had been stolen on Tuesday afternoon.

The man has since been released on police bail with conditions whilst enquiries continue.

Safer Neighbourhood Team Sergeant Craig Butler said: “One of our officers immediately recognised this bicycle, as it had been security marked at one of our free bike marking events less than two weeks ago! Thanks to this, we were able to reunite the victim with her bicycle within 24 hours of it being stolen.

“I hope that this demonstrates that we are constantly listening to the concerns voiced by members of the public, and reacting quickly to any intelligence or patterns that emerge in terms of local crime. We really value your feedback, and utilise it for our patrol plans and community engagement work – you can let us know what you’d like to see us focusing on by using our anonymous community voice platform echo (opens in a new window). 

“We are so pleased that we were able to reunite the victim with her bicycle, and hopefully in due course we will able to do the same with the other recovered bicycles. Security marking your bicycle is really worthwhile, and something that we offer quite regularly – it’s a completely free service which only takes a couple of minutes. We advertise these events via our Watford Police Facebook page (opens in a new window), so please keep an eye out on there for details of any upcoming dates.”

You can use our anonymous community voice platform ‘echo’ to let us know what you think we should be prioritising in your area. Your feedback will help towards shaping our local policing priorities, initiatives and campaigns. Visit Watford echo (opens in a new window) and tell us your thoughts.

To receive police messages about a range of topics including burglaries, scams and missing people in your local area, sign up OWL (opens in a new window)or download the ‘OWL crime alerts’ app from your app store.