That’s my bike

BY NANCY KELLY

Kings County Register



Constable Mirko Markovic is inviting citizens of Western Kings County to assist in the recovery of stolen bicycles.

A bike registration service is being established by the Kingston detachment of the Kings RCMP.

Under the new system, cyclists can provide identifying data about their bikes to the police, who will in turn log that information into an RCMP computer database.

“Right now, we keep track of stolen and recovered bikes in a log book,” explains Markovic, “but that is not a good investigative tool.”

Markovic says bike theft is a big problem, but admits people don’t always report it.

“Very often, the bikes we find become ‘mystery bikes’ because they have never been reported missing,” says Markovic. He adds, because the police service is not able to match recovered bikes to owners, the detachment usually has an inventory of unclaimed bikes.

“Under this new system, we would have the information we need to get these recovered bikes back to their owners.”

Markovic is co-ordinating the bike registration October 20 from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the Kingston RCMP detachment. Anyone who wants to register a bike just needs to bring the make, model and colour of a bike and, if available, the bike’s serial number. If the bike has no number on it, bring the bike and the RCMP will add one to it. Upon registration, participants will be provided with a card listing all the information.

“Then, if they happen to have their bike stolen, all they will need to do is bring that card into the detachment and we can flag the bike with that information,” says Markovic.

While the bike registration system won’t stop bikes from being stolen, Markovic says it will improve the odds of having them returned to owners.

“It also represents a shift in thinking for the RCMP, one that is more about preventive policing that just reacting to incidents.”

The first 45 people to register a bike on the 20th will also receive a bike manual that offers cycling safety tips and ways to avoid bike theft.

For information about the program, contact the detachment at 765-3317.