volunteer investigators help victims find their stolen bikes

In the north of Paris, an underground market has emerged. Men offer passers-by bicycles for a few tens of euros. Very quickly, a seller offers one of them at 60 euros, a price four times cheaper than that displayed in the store. The market is flourishing: every year, 300,000 bicycles are stolen in France. Few are found by the police, so the victims organize. Thibault Lachesnaie got into the game: every day, he scans the classifieds on social networks, which he compares to photos posted by victims.

Thanks to this volunteer investigator, a cyclist was able to notify the police and set a trap for the thief of her bicycle. “It’s good to have a solidarity movement“, she underlines. A happy ending, but infrequent. For the police, it is difficult to identify with certainty stolen property that does not have an identification number, explains Josias Claude, departmental secretary of the SGP Police 75 unit, unless “that the receiver does not admit the theft“To fight against this traffic, since January 2021, all new bicycles must be identified on purchase, by a unique marking.