I'm going to put some of the blame on the Denver government/police for this, but not for a lack of enforcement. If your bike is impounded or stolen and recovered it is nearly impossible to retrieve it. You cannot call to see if it was picked up. You cannot look for it online. You have to show up to their sketchy office during business hours, wait in line, and ask the guy to go look through all the bikes and try to find yours. With hundreds of bikes it almost certainly will not be found.
The government auctions off some of the bikes and gives or sells the rest of the bikes to charity.
Two years ago my bike was locked in a location it should not have been downtown along with many other bikes. When I came back to find my bike missing the police officer said all of the bikes were impounded. I called around, went to the impound place twice.. but my bike was never found.
In short, great investigation work by bike index. But their efforts are hindered by the city.
Large parts of America seem to still see bikes as "toys" rather than somewhat expensive vehicles that people depend on. Imagine if this approach was taken with recovered stolen cars too.
Except, it is almost the exact same with cars. If your car is stolen, there is very little chance the cops will actually help you recover it. If it is impounded, you too get to stand in line during business hours trying to get it back (if you can). At some point, those cars are also sold at auction.
Yeah - seriously. I only found my stolen car because someone reported it to the police because the people that were leaving it were being a loud nuisance.
Oh yeah - it was already being given parking tickets too. While it was reported stolen. I had to go to the local court in person in order to get the tickets revoked.
Law enforcement and the general institution of law does not care.
A friend of mine had his car stolen, his ex had a key and wanted to make him mad. We live in a rural area so the sheriff just dropped it off at his house once they recovered it. He even put gas in it and invited us to shoot at his range.
I've also seen cops change tires and things like that.
If you're in a more rural area - it will vary. I grew up with a LEO and in a rural area - so I'm familiar with how some cops will act in rural areas. There's a higher chance that if you're an officer in a rural area - you also live in that specific area that you're policing. Whereas in cities - it's very often that you're policing in a region where you don't vote or live in.
Even for people I knew in law enforcement in the rural areas - they didn't like to live in the area they were policing because of the consequences. You're now a local who has to live with the consequences of how you've treated people during your job.
My stolen scooter (like a vespa) was only “recovered” after the police (or someone) found it totaled on the side of the road. The police then had it shipped to an impound lot. I had to pay the lot $400 for the courtesy of them storing it, and I told them I didn’t want my totaled scooter and they could send it to a salvage yard. My immediate impression was that the police officers were making money off this scenario.
Mine showed up because it was parked in a side street with the windows down in the rainy season, and an officer on his morning bike ride took a quick peak and saw the keybarell broken.
I think there is only so much they can do from a systemic point of view, since they can't put the manpower into looking for them. When they are recovered it's usually because it's related to some other police activity that occurred and it was collateral to that. Same with bikes I think.
The issue is it can end up in an impound lot or tow yard and there seems to be no systematic VIN checking. The car could be auctioned without your knowledge.
I always figured it was supposed to not work like this, as the title change is the one place you can catch it, but I guess not? Must be reporting it as abandoned when it really isn't.
There are a lot more incentives to find a car than a bike. The money involved is higher, social risks too (less road kills due to a crazy bike driver). There's also less institutions at play, no rich bike insurance companies. Also most bikes are untraceable unlike car with plate numbers. And logistically it's harder to hide a car somehow (still possible of course).
I agree institutions are absurd and don't care enough though.
> Law enforcement and the general institution of law does not care.
TLDR: Don't blame the street-level bureaucrats and everyone in the institution for policy failures.
You fail to understand that this is a public policy issue. I bet you the average individual cop does care. I use the term average so people don't resort to extremes (good cop or bad cop). His workload is so high that your issue falls below his threshold. It's not his fault, it's the fault of local public policy. It's undermanned and underfunded.
I remember my brother yelling at an Amazon driver for speeding. He's incentivized to do so by his employer. Yes, the driver probably shouldn't speed, but he's also not making very much money and needs this job. His employer is likely more guilty for not providing additional drivers, at cost, to allow safety. But that would be a market imperfection due to externalities which are not regulated (the externality being public safety - the cost of which the private institution generally does not bear). The same type of issue occurrs in the public policy arena, but the failure is on the lack of funding towards a known issue which results in poor services to the public. No, people cannot do more with less with zero losses.
Sure. I never meant for it to come across as exlusive. Returning stolen items is just never going to be much of a priority for the police. Unless maybe that stolen item was key to another investigation.
Honestly, I don't really think police should be in the business of tracking down stolen items unless finding the items leads them to the theives. So unless the theft of items is under some larger crime, why should cops be on the look out for a bicycle/car/tv/xbox/etc?
It's pretty much what insurance is for. Now, I'd much rather the police investigate the crimes committed by insurance companies on not paying out the claims. At least, that should be a crime.
We had a car stolen about 15 years ago. It was recovered a day or so later in the next jurisdiction over, and stowed in an impound lot. We drove over on a Saturday to retrieve it. We did have to pay something, but on the whole the retrieval was painless.
My car was stolen recently, and the day it happened I was told it's most probably already in a shipping container on the way to Haiti or something, and not to expect to get it back. The role of the police seems to be completely administrative rather than actually spending time trying to solve the crime. I expect insurance is the biggest difference between cars and bikes, and if one had theft insurance on the bike, the procedure and interaction with the police would be virtually identical for a bike vs a car
I had a bike stolen in high school and knew exactly who took it and the police still wouldn't do more than take a report, which they discouraged me from actually doing.
If your car is stolen, there is very little chance the cops will actually help you recover it.
I was very surprised to read in a big city newspaper recently that the city's police department had a 70-something percent success rate in recovering stolen cars and returning them to their owners.
I was really shocked, because I just assumed that it would be like that scene in The Big Lebowski where the cop laughs when the guy who's car was stolen asks if they have any leads. It turns out that's not the reality at all.
Lots of stolen cars are used for joyriding or other crimes and then abandoned. The "recovered" statistic includes a lot of "your car was found six weeks later, trashed, in an industrial parking lot".
> Except, it is almost the exact same with cars. If your car is stolen, there is very little chance the cops will actually help you recover it.
Not the same thing. The parent comment is saying that the police department is getting ahold of the stolen bikes, but not making any effort to return them to their rightful owners.
If your stolen car is abandoned somewhere and found by the police, you'll be getting a call ASAP. They're obviously not out there scanning every car on the road to see if it's yours, but if it comes into their possession it's going to find its way back to the registered owner very quickly.
I’ve had a stolen car recovered, I was physically present and called the police. They insistent on towing it away and not letting me take it. Turns out the police have contracts with both the tow company and impound lot and it was not policy just a matter of revenue. I even had video of the police confirming the costs and wouldn’t you know the impound lot jacked up the fee 2x and insisted I pay in cash. It’s a racket and the longer the hold vehicles the more you have to pay, there are vehicles that are abandoned because the impound fee ends up exceed the value of the vehicle (that’s not a joke or exaggeration).
Theft of a vehicle (perhaps a constructed theft or the technical term for theft of a lost item) is almost always a felony, if not because of the item then because of the dollar value. Have you seen any case law in states about shooting tow operators and impound lot operators who steal cars?
Many cities do little to nothing about bike theft. I've sat in meetings with a prior police chief of the city of Santa Cruz where he flat out stated, unless the owner sees the theft (or an officer does), they will not do anything. At the time, multiple other cities I spent time in (the east bay) would at least make contact with and check on people. If the person had bike theft tools on them, they'd be arrested.
Bike theft is one of the rampant issues in areas with excessive drug use, etc. Nearly every homeless encampment in west coast cities will have one or more people with piles of bikes and bike parts.
This is frustrating, because it's not a difficult crime to deter. The gain to the thief is very small, but if the city makes no enforcement effort at all, the risk to the thief is even smaller. Some people think that since police couldn't catch a large fraction of the offenders, it's not practical to deter the crime, but this isn't true; all that's needed is to bring the risk into the same range as the gain, which, again, is quite small. So almost any real chance of prosecution is sufficient. I've read that this theory has been verified experimentally, though I don't recall where.
Yet Facebook earns money of this illegal business, no? Just like their practice with the Amazon land plots they catered to buyers. The list of illegal things that Facebook facilitates in return of profits is endless and just banning the city is too short-sighted in my view.
Furthermore, there are many openly visible bike chop-shop shops among the numerous tent camps around Denver. I have seen some with 20-50 bicycles lying about; many more then camp inhabitants could personally use. Social media like Nextdoor notes these. Its a low priority to overworked police who are aware of them. The felony-theft thresholdin Colorado is $2000; which many better bikes exceed.
They use the serial number as a means to identify that you are actually the owner. Denver has a system where if you register you bike with the city and your bike is found they'll notify you.
The serial number sticker on my Specialized de-laminated and peeled off after a few years of commuting in occasionally damp conditions. I was kind of shocked that there wouldn't be a better way of uniquely identifying it if I needed to, aside from having pictures of scratches and dings.
For a more expensive bike it’s worth considering an active tracker.
Some guys near hear burgled a bike shop recently, and were busted quickly one of the reasons being the owners noticed the stock moving.
you can inset a label into the resin, or a metal plate with an engraving on it. Or engrave any of the other embedded metal parts already in the frame for connection with the outside world.
Yes, this is a solvable problem. My hunch is that there’s no incentive for bike manufacturers to deal with this. If there were permanent serial numbers that could be attributed to the owner, they’d have to respond to thousands of requests for verification.
It's worth doing a few things on the frame to make it unique. Bit of paint and so on. It both makes it identifiable and less attractive to professional thieves who want to flip whole bikes.
I had a house break-in a number of years ago. That's a BIG deal, at least it was for me.
I understood then what it meant to feal 'violated'. I was also shocked that the cops seemed to be 'going through the motions'. They dusted for prints and took the identifying information I gave them, but I was expecting a little more action. I suppose I got that idea from tv.
Now that time has passed and I've had time to cool down, I think I better understand what I saw happening. The small-ish city I live in has a small police force, they're almost always busy with some minor crimes, probably domestic disputes, drunk drivers, traffic safety, etc. There's just not time fo r the pawn-shop snooping I was imagining.
I suppose if they had more budget, then there might be manpower for more activities. But I think the funding is about right-- I wouldn't want to pay for any more, and I wouldn't want any less safety.
The theft here feels off the charts right now too.
I know a lot of police have quit and they don't have budget to increase next class size. Vaccines too..
Sympathizers say that cities' new rules on when to engage are a big cause but it seems to me we can have both enforcement and no needless violence. To me it feels like police are just having a temper tantrum saying you don't want us, watch what happens when we don't do anything.
I see cop cars breaking traffic laws around cap hill and downtown and just driving around staring at the homeless camps. Flipping on lights to go the wrong way down a one way street around civic building. When there is an OD (all the time) I just see them sitting in their car doing nothing but wait for paramedics. zero humanity.
I can't remember the last time I've seen a traffic enforcement stop and speeding & illegal parking is out of control.
I'm not sure if it's uniquely bad here? I know theft is increasing everywhere.
I've had my car broken into four times this year, often they just pull on the topper until it breaks open. Usually nothing in there. Once went through back window to the front. If a package is in the entrance more than a day it will be gone.
Last year I had a probably 300 pound, 4' x 6' wooden crate stolen from my back parking lot! insane. It was a pretty expensive marble sink top.
I've installed cameras and more lights doesn't matter or make any difference.
Somewhat off topic but insurance lady on the phone spent 20 minutes on hold trying to find a way to reject the claim... Same with my recent travel insurance. Provide them the bare minimum documentation and say nothing beyond a couple sentences on the phone they will just sit quietly on the phone waiting for you to say something, often emotionally since something crappy happened. they are looking for anything to use against your claim. Sucks.
People hate to see reality but let's be honest. Cops do a terrible job. If a crime against you happens. It will likely never be solved. The report will be there for you though
But they just don't have enough of funding is always the big complaint. And it's bullshit when they walk around with body armor and use military equipment from Iraq.
Crimes only get solved accidentally by cops. If they happen to see it go down and then somehow catch them in the act
In early high school, we'd ride bikes to the local coffee shop, lean them against the big windows out front and hangout. Somehow, no one noticed when mine was snatched one evening. I was pretty devastated.
My grandfather drove me around the town the next day to see if I could spot it. When we were about to give up, I noticed a bike leaning along side a house near the shop. I could see it from the street. It looked exactly like mine. It had the same replacement seat and even a curly bike lock coiled around the handlebars on the same side I left it. But it had been hastily spray pained.
We called the police, they arrived and a kid inside noticed the commotion and came out. They had found the bike at the shop and took it. I went to inspect it. I was very surprised when I found the small yard behind the house was packed with around fifty bikes. To the cop, I said something like, "there's tons of bikes back here!" I then remembered another friend had theirs stolen as well.
He didn't look for himself, and said I couldn't just take the bike. There was no proof it was mine. So, I said, "what if I can unlock the bike lock?" I could and was allowed to take it, but it had been ruined. My prized shiny bike had been banged up and spray painted.
The following week my mother read me a letter that had arrived. The town would not be prosecuting the kid. I was confused. I did nothing wrong and stayed out of trouble myself. Did their actions not warrant any consequences?
My mother ended up going to the police department and insisting the town prosecute, which they ended up doing. I'm not sure what happened. Did the consequences dissuade them from stealing a 51st bike? Their family had failed them, would their community? If not for religion, what hope did they have?
Had my bike stolen twice out of my garage and the first thing I did was file a police report with the color and brand. Write down your serial number if you have a bike and so you can provide that as well.
I knew the police would not really look for a bike so I scoured Craigslist, OfferUp, and Facebook Marketplace. Eventually I found the bike both times. I messaged the person to meet up, called the police, and provided my report number and the listing. The police met up the people and got my bike back twice.
What happened to the thieves that stole my bike twice and broke my expensive locks? Absolutely nothing. When I asked the cop why they weren't cited or charged, he said they were fences. Guess if you're a fence, you can get away with selling stolen goods because you can claim you thought you bought the item legitimately. I'm sure those fences were selling other people's bikes as well, but cops didn't do anything.
The deterrence for small crimes is slowly falling as thieves are realizing that the cops are not punishing thieves even after catching them red-handed.
> The town would not be prosecuting the kid. I was confused. I did nothing wrong and stayed out of trouble myself. Did their actions not warrant any consequences?
I feel like there is an unpleasant reality that people either don’t realize or don’t want to accept… there is simply not enough resources to go after every petty criminal with prosecution. Honestly, I am not even sure it would be a good idea even if we had the resources… should we spend thousands on a prosecution over a $50 crime? Will that actually reduce crime enough to make it worthwhile?
Criminal prosecution works as a deterrent by being something that CAN happen for minor crimes, but doesn’t always… the chance they could be prosecuted hopefully deters most would be criminals, and only prosecuting a few saves money and is more efficient.
My bicycle was stolen when I was a kid and we saw the thief ride away. My father gave chase in his car and eventually came back with the bicycle. I was pretty impressed... Thanks for reminding me of that. Generally I've always ridden bikes that are so cheap/crappy looking that thiefs never bothered me. I used to just leave them unlocked all over the place and never had a problem (though none of these places and times were like any of today's hot spots). Now motorcycles getting stolen is yet another story.
I looked to see if they have been sentenced, but instead found this about the fence of the group:
"Adrian Rocha Chairez is charged with 31 felony counts including racketeering. Police say he headed up an organized crime ring responsible for more than a million dollars in damaged property and stolen cars and bikes. He was indicted in Denver, where a judge set bond at $500,000.
A Boulder judge knocked it down to $10,000. He walked out even after prosecutors noted he had weapons and ties to Mexico."
Hoo boy, this one's good (from the same article): "Police suspect Savuth and Yulisa Yin in the death and cover-up of a Longmont real estate broker. They’re charged with stealing $3 million in property from him. They were let out on $500 cash bonds each, even after prosecutors presented evidence that they planned to leave the country."
Donations to 529 are encouraged and you can buy their sticker, but you can also register your new bike for free just by taking a few photos of it, your bill of sale, and its serial number (typically embossed into the bottom bracket somewhere). Takes a max of 5-10 minutes to do to set up new account and register a bike.
I am loathe to recommend the use of Facebook for anything, but people in the metro Vancouver area have taken it on themselves to create a group called Stolen Bikes Vancouver which has successfully crowdsourced the location and return of bikes to some people. It's at least better than doing nothing, in the almost total lack of law enforcement cooperation.
Donate to Bike Index! We’re more widely used everywhere except for Vancouver. Also, we wrote this article! And Bike Index is a non profit, so it makes sense to donate to us, rather than a for profit company.
> I am loathe to recommend the use of Facebook for anything, but [...] It's at least better than doing nothing
Is it? A central theme of the article is how Facebook is facilitating bike theft by providing essential electronic storefront space, and that you can't get Facebook to take down such storefronts.
> and that you can't get Facebook to take down such storefronts.
This really surprised me given the difficulty I had with Facebook Marketplace incorrectly taking down my listings and refusing to put them back up (one was an empty aquarium, taken down for selling "live animals").
The remarkable thing about modern online platforms that have zero accountability or customer service is that they somehow manage to have an alarmingly high false positive rate and false negative rate at the same time. It remains unclear to me if this is inevitable at their scale, or simply that they really are that bad.
yes, though as facebook seems to be a lowest-common-denominator method of social media communications for many people, even if they use it rarely, I am not aware of any other 4000 person group for sharing stolen bike information in that specific city.
simultaneously you've got stolen bike sales going on within the facebook marketplace and also a group of people trying to find/recover their stolen bikes.
Bike Index is very well known at least in OR/WA (I'm in PDX) and has been around a long time. I appreciate you're supportive of another effort but you don't need to push one effort down to lift another up.
I don't see where I said anything disparaging bikeindex, it certainly can't hurt to register a bike or search on both sites. My comment was a one person sample size anecdote of what I've commonly seen used on the west coast.
interestingly both sites want to claim to be the single authoritative source of data, and place to register and search for stolen bikes, but the "market" for such online services is really split between the two... or maybe there's a 3rd online bike registry I'm totally unaware of as well?
in reality I think the data is split between the two sites. My bike is registered on 529, this has provided motivation to me to also submit the same photos/data to bikeindex for a belt and suspenders type approach.
I was surprised by the table showing 177,000 listings for one and 700,000 listings in the other.
Ideally they could both share data and mirror each other for both registrations and stolen bike listings, for the most effective use by people who may be unaware of the other entity.
> Ideally, this article would hopefully help de-platform this seller off of Facebook, but we aren't holding our breath on that one. Facebook is basically terrible about this, and their existing mechanisms for dealing with reporting sellers like this simply don't work.
> [...]
> There is no button to click where you can explain to anybody at FB "this is a repeat seller of bikes stolen in Colorado, and here's our proof, and here's our contact info." etc. It is almost as if their system for reporting stolen goods is designed not to work.
So "storefront for stolen goods" is another way Facebook makes our lives worse.
In Vancouver if your bike gets stolen there's also an almost literal storefront for stolen goods. If your bike gets stolen and is worth a few thousand dollars there's a good chance it will turn up within a few hours to a few days at a street market of stolen goods, in a specific several block zone of East Hastings.
If it is really high end (like $7000+ Canadian dollar value) and the theft was targeted rather than random, more likely it might get parted out/sold as components on facebook or sent to another provice for sale by an organized group. Very occasionally Vancouver police or RCMP will find a storage unit full of $7000+ bikes that are being collected together in one place prior to transport out of province.
The thing I find surprising about high-end bike crime -- it seems easy to crack down on -- if there's any desire to do so.
Acquire some bait bikes, then put some 40mm GPS trackers somewhere unusual in the bike (the chain stays?), maybe this requires a bit of surgery, but this seems like a relatively small cost. Then raid whatever warehouse they end up in.
I guess there's no real political will to do this.
chainstays seem like it would be a hard technical problem since cutting open/accessing the inside of a chain stay would greatly weaken a bike. and on road bikes/hybrid bikes the chainstay diameter can be quite narrow.
Some sort of GPS+LTE data modem and battery might be easily integrated into a seatpost based tracker, or stem, or combined stem-bar unit. A bit tricky since either aluminum or carbon fiber structural components are RF opaque.
maybe mounted in one of the areas in the downtube or seat tube that's designed into modern road bikes for ultegra/di2 internal battery mounting, or related to power meter crankset mounting.
> chainstays seem like it would be a hard technical problem since cutting open/accessing the inside of a chain stay would greatly weaken a bike.
On a bait bike it wouldn’t matter too much since you just want to track the thing and shouldn’t really care about the thieves getting a fully working bike.
I had this “bait bike” in the back of my pickup truck that was in very bad shape that helped a kid down the street get their stolen bike back, apparently the thief decided that the bike I had was better than their current stolen one so did a quick swap and another neighbor saw my bike dumped around the corner, a bike lying in the street next to my truck and put two and two together. Worked out pretty well considering I found the one bike on the side of the road while walking my dog and threw it in my truck to see how long it would take to get stolen — didn’t think it would last a week but I drove around with that thing for seven months.
I think the downside of seatpost/stem is that it's more easy to check. Good point about RF, didn't consider that. I still think it's within the realms of possibility though?
Maybe they don't need to be hidden that well. If one or slip past then you can track those to the warehouse and send a few people to jail.
After that people can add fake trackers (maybe an antenna lead under the seat). Now the thieves have extra uncertainty, raising the cost to steal. And working trackers will be mixed in with the fake ones, making each bike a gamble.
This strategy works well in biology. Have one brightly coloured poisonous frog and then there are three or four mimics who are not poisonous (poison requires lots of resources!). Sure, some frogs still get eaten, but the mere threat of poison reduces the risk.
Maybe built into/epoxied to the inside-facing-side of crankset arms? Such that it looks like an expensive power meter crank. Definitely within the realm of possibility and I have heard that people have successfully done it as a DIY approach.
In the 2000s Craigslist was threatened by a coalition of 40 state attorneys general into policing their sex ads....Facebook will need something similar.
Facebook has all the information any willing police officer/DA would need to capture the thieves. All they would need to do is go to a judge and ask.
Also the legislature could make laws to make it easier to send bike thieves to jail.
The government != Facebook and it's better that way since we can vote to change things that we find wrong with the government, but lack that ability with FB
Traditional retailers of used goods like pawn shops are usually subject to pretty stringent regulation - not necessarily to determine if goods are stolen, but to record identification of the seller to enable an investigation later. In some places this does include proactively sending a report of items to the police for checking against stolen reports. So there's a pretty clear precedent for regulation of this kind directed towards online marketplaces, but you can no doubt predict the questions around the difference between a pawn shop (being the seller) and Facebook (being not the seller but just a provider of listings).
States enforce pawn laws through electronic systems like LEADS. FB, offerup, and every other platform out there letting thieves fence things with impunity could implement same.
Guess I'll just run with this:
Since this article was published, here's what has transpired
My inbox became:
a) various cyclists in Mexico giving me more info
b) new victims who have read the article, identifying their stolen bikes in this guy's sales that we posted, including commercial shop robberies
c) people sending copies of his "official message" to his clients he posted, in which he denies the claims we make and essentially calls us liars, etc and asks for his customers support
After that, Mexican Cycling FB picked it up. FWIW Mex cycling folks are awesome, we had some really good input and comms with folks in that community.
For about 24 hours the store would remove any negative comments from their page from cyclists and/or customers, far as we could tell, and all his customers were chiming in how much of a great shop he was with great deals and great service. Nobody would address the proof we posted of stolen in his sales.
As of an hour ago (?) or so the guys page is now gone.
Really interesting find. I had previously seen suspicion that this exact thing was happening. Were these Guerilla Gravity bikes linked to the showroom burglary that happened earlier this year?
Also, could you please try to get this posted on Pinkbike/VitalMTB? Would like to see this shared on other common bike sites.
Yes, those GG bikes are confirmed. And yes its on PB somewhere in the forums. And many Colorado FB groups, which is how new victims which we knew nothing about are now trickling in. Please spread it wherever you can.
Did you attempt to report these guys to Mexican police? (I know Mexico has a reputation for being a failing state, but the chance something will come of it is at least not zero, surely).
This is a great article. The resale prices of the bikes are also interesting (in the mid 4 figures USD range), considering the per capita income of Mexico vs the USA.
There are plenty of people in Mexico that have that kind of disposable income. Fewer than in the US, sure, but Mexico is a rich country by global standards and its wealth is very unequally distributed.
The amount of this behavior on eBay is also pretty stunning, however the rules that have been proposed to curve this basically stand to completely destroy secondary markets which is horrible for single use electronics consumption and the environment in general.
One of the apple iTags would probably work pretty well I would think. Attach with GorillaGlue++ so they have to seriously degrade the value of the bike for extra points.
Who is buying a $5000 bike from Mexico for a 10% discount. Seems like a lot of risk for a very minor discount on an very expensive item with no warranty. It makes me suspicious there is even more to the story than the author was able to dig into.
check out "14B.90.080 Reporting of Secondhand Dealer Transactions"
details differ by state and city, but the gist is "electronic records of serials are transmitted to law enforcement" etc. Also items are held for a while, not sold immediately.
The government auctions off some of the bikes and gives or sells the rest of the bikes to charity.
Two years ago my bike was locked in a location it should not have been downtown along with many other bikes. When I came back to find my bike missing the police officer said all of the bikes were impounded. I called around, went to the impound place twice.. but my bike was never found.
In short, great investigation work by bike index. But their efforts are hindered by the city.