AskewLord

Because there isn’t in most cases.

In cases of confrontation/bike recovery you have to have proof of ownership and you have to proof of theft.

Also in a big city dept, they simple don’t care about petty theft.

The case you are linking to involves $5000+ bikes. That’s not petty theft, that’s similar to car theft. The crime is already grand larceny per theft. Of course with that amount of money people are going to be way more motivated, and it’s going to be a small subset of very wealthy enthusiasts. The vast majority of bikes people ride and that get stolen are in the $100 range, usually by homeless people who part them out for scrap metal to get money for drugs. In my city any homeless encampment has piles of stolen bikes that are torn apart because the alloy parts are what they can scrap for some decent money. The steel is worthless.

Street Bike theft is a trivial crime that isn’t worth wasting resources on. Most bikes are petty larceny unless they are $1000+ and that is the value of the bike at the time of theft, not the fact you paid $3000 for it 5 years ago.

Typically when the police are involved it’s organized crime situations of mass bike theft from shops or containers that bring much higher chargers.

Why would you ever leave such a bike out in public such that it gets stolen?