The evening of Sept. 15, University freshman Chris Pollard sat in his parents’ car behind a green pickup truck parked in front of Boynton residence hall and peered into its camper shell.
It was filled with bikes.
The driver of the truck, who was smoking a cigarette and wearing dark clothing, noticed Pollard and quickly hand-motioned to someone farther ahead.
“We thought it was kind of shady,” Pollard said.
As Pollard paced toward the dorm to grab his own bike, the other man, sitting on the stoop of Watson residence hall, suddenly stood, reached for a pair of 4-foot-long metal bolt cutters and ran toward the truck.
“The car turned right onto Columbia, a dead-end, so obviously they did not go to school here,” said Pollard, who had time to catch the suspicious truck’s license plate number.
“I’m sure if we just got up and left they would have kept going,” he said.
Pollard and his family drove the few blocks to the Department of Public Safety building and told two officers that they had witnessed a bike theft. The officers jotted down Pollard’s phone number in case they found anything and jogged to their cars.
But they never called.
The next day as Pollard walked past the same bike rack, however, he noticed that three butchered U-locks, two of them manufactured by Kryptonite, still lay on the East 13th Avenue sidewalk.
Feeling discouraged, Pollard posted a Craigslist ad under “bikes for sale” that warned students: “Keep a lookout, and realize that nothing is safe anymore.”
DPS did not file a report or even post the bike thievery in the department’s media log, which tracks suspicious and illegal actions around the University area.
“It makes us feel that they don’t really care,” Pollard said, noting how students responded to his post with e-mails expressing gratitude.
DPS Lt. Herb Horner said that in order for the department to file a theft report, however, the owner of the stolen bike must contact the department; witnesses mean little.
There have been only five reported campus bike thefts since Sept. 22, the weekend before classes began, Horner said. He partly attributed the low number to the campus security officers who now patrol throughout the entire night.
“If you’re here at 2 a.m., and you’re not a student or faculty, you don’t belong here,” he said.
The University campus and areas immediately west and south of the University had 109 total reported bike thefts from Jan. 1 to Aug. 31, said Eugene police spokeswoman Kerry Delf.
“We are certainly aware that University areas are hot spots for bike theft,” she said.
Bike thieves come to the University all throughout the day and night to scope out bike racks, Horner said.
“They’re shopping,” he said. “The thieves know students are back.”
Horner and Kelley agreed that prowlers generally look over those bikes locked with both cable and U-locks.
Thieves may still steal certain parts of double-locked bikes, however, making part thievery an increasing problem at the University. At the end of each school year, DPS finds “more and more skeletons” because bike thieves take what they can get.
Only one stolen bike seat has been reported to DPS so far this school year, but a walk through campus reveals several bikes missing pieces.
Pollard was most surprised by the fact that the bike thieves pilfered only with bikes locked by U-locks, which companies advertise as better bike safeguards than simple cable locks.
“The U-locks are harder to break into,” said Paul’s Bicycle Way of Life employee Tom Stockton. “Any cable lock can be cut in less than a minute with pocket pliers.”
Blue Heron Bicycles owner Susan Kelley agreed with the U-lock’s effectiveness, but she said students can still secure cable locks so that tamperers can’t leverage the lock.
“The cable lock can be just very, very easy to get into,” Kelley said.
Kelley also advised that students find bike storage during holiday breaks, such as Thanksgiving and Christmas.
Nancy Wright, director of University Housing Facilities, said the University is currently looking to build more enclosed bike racks like those outside of the new Living and Learning Center and Walton Complex. These racks are metal cages that require a key to open and can store about 70 bikes.
“But students are preferring the open racks,” Wright said, noting how students must rely on everyone who uses the bike cage in case someone forgets to lock it.
Horner said all students who ride their bikes should register them for free with DPS because it allows DPS to return recovered stolen bikes to their rightful owners. Unregistered cyclists also risk a $20 ticket if caught by DPS.
Besides just filing a stolen bike report with DPS, students can visit Paul’s Bicycle Way of Life’s new Web site, www.findmybicycle.com, to report a stolen bike’s description.
“I heard Eugene was one of the best places to ride a bike and the worst places to own one,” Pollard said.
Contact the crime, health and safety reporter at [email protected]