A stolen bike has been recovered and returned to its grateful owner via Bikeregister.com, following a successful police initiative to prevent and deter bike theft in Peterborough city centre.

Funded by Cambridgeshire Constabulary and local city centre businesses, bikes belonging to local residents, shoppers, office workers, students and children were recently marked free of charge and placed on the secure online Bikeregister database (http://www.bikeregister.com) by community safety officers and local neighbourhood policing team members.

One of the bikes marked belonged to a local man who subsequently had his new Probike stolen at the beginning of February. The bike was later found abandoned by a member of the public, who took it home with him to keep it safe. He then took a photo of the bike into Thorpe Wood Police Station.

From the photo, PCSO Tracey South based at Thorpe Wood, was alerted to the fact that the bike had stickers on it and had been marked using a Bikeregister permanent marking kit. She was also able to verify the bike’s frame number.

Bikeregister is owned and maintained by security company Selectamark and aims to reduce bicycle theft and assist in owner recovery. Bikes are permanently and visibly marked with a unique ID code to prove ownership and placed on the secure database for the lifetime of the bike.

If a bike is stolen and then recovered, police can check the marking and log onto the database to quickly verify the true owner and reunite them with their bike. As part of the scheme, each bike owner is issued with a personal logbook as proof of ownership.
PCSO South said: “The owner of the bike was very pleased to get his bike back as he had spent a long while saving up for it and had been devastated when it was stolen.”

She added: “This is proof positive that Bikeregister works, as without the marking on the bike we would have had no way of finding out whom it belonged to. The owner was overjoyed to get his bike back, so much so that he hugged the officer who returned it to him!”
For more press information and images, contact: Angela Singleton, Selectamark and Bikeregister Press Officer. Mobile: 07905 623 819. Email: [email protected]

For further information and images contact: Jodie Fisher, Marketing Executive for Selectamark.

Phone: +44 (0)1689 487829
Email: [email protected]
Twitter: @bikeregister