By now the whole world has learned about Igor Kenk, the Canadian bike shop owner caught up in a massive bike theft sting. At last count, Kenk had over 3000 stolen bikes stashed in multiple storage units around the city. It has been a week and cops are still recovering bikes that Kenk had stashed in storage. And now it looks like Kenk's wife - a respected concert pianist and Juilliard grad - has been dragged into the mess as well, since she's now facing drug and stolen property charges. Way to go, Igor!
This story has been getting progressively worse - fueled partially by Kenk's own profanity laden tirades on bike ownership and rightful recovery and the rest of the world's desire to burn him at the stake. We'll keep an eye out and see what kind of sentence this guy gets.
In the meantime, there are a five lessons this whole stupid ugly thing can teach us about bike theft:
1) The Community Always Knows The Bad Apples
Read the comments on these stories and you'll see that Kenk's shop was known locally as a dirty shop for a long time, to the point that locals would joke about having to ".. go to Igor's within two to four hours .. " after a bike theft. Cops: listen to your local bikers. They know what's what.
2) Thieves Regularly Chop and Disfigure Bikes To Mask Their Origin
I know most of you are saying "well, duh", but it bears repeating that the frame serial number is often going to be the only thing you can go by, especially when asshat thieves admit that they alter the bikes they steal to mask proper identification. This is why the SBR focuses on serials, even though we'd like to be able to recover components, too.
3) Drugs Are Almost Always Part Of The Problem
When police raided Kenk's homes and storage facilities, they not only found thousands of bikes - they found a kilo of blow, crack, and 17 pounds of weed.
I've written about the link between bike theft and meth before, but it bears repeating - these petty theft rings often exchange drugs for bikes. Any cop chasing bike thieves is likely to get a nice drug bust thrown in for free. (update: Not to mention art theft!)
4) Current Laws On Resale and Recovery Aren't Helping Anybody But Thieves
Part of the reason guys like Kenk even exist is because the laws on bike recovery are flawed. Kenk himself details how he skirted around the local three week recovery laws by hiding bikes in storage to let them 'cool off'. These loopholes aren't helping anybody but the thieves.
5) Finally: There Are Good Guys In This Fight, Too
Hats off to Consts. James Rowe and Craig Meredith, the cops running the bait bike program that caught Kenk red-handed and brought about his bust. Their bait-bike work landed much bigger haul than I think even they expected, racking up 60 charges at last count, and they're part of the good fight. Thanks guys!
