Digging up old posts, eh?

I mostly agree with you here. I’m not trying to put all the blame on the victim, but I do support people making the effort to lock up right.

But condescending? Oh, I’m totally being condescending, and it’s intentional. The tone here is one of talking to a child, and that’s because that’s how one is acting when they fantasize about vigilante actions against bike thieves. It’s not an intelligent or thought out approach to addressing the issue. And so I am taking a condescending tone, and the bit about not locking up properly is part of that. One can’t very well talk about setting up vigilante actions self righteously when one didn’t even bother to lock up well.

Violence is immoral and illegal. There’s no question about that, at least for 99.9999 % of people. I think many people, right after having their transportation stolen, say a lot of things they don’t actually mean. It’s a way people deal with anger. And things have come a long way since it was routine to hang horse thieves … sometimes for public entertainment.

On the other hand, when you write “The reality is they stole your bike because you didn’t secure it properly…” that comes off as condescending, and as casting all the blame on the victim. No matter how stupid a person is for using the wrong lock to improperly secure their worthless bike, it’s still a crime to take the bike without that person’s permission.

Take a good hard look in the first second of the in the center of the frame in the bottom. That is a battery powered drill on the ground, the thief’s. What they should have done is locked the thief to a post and then called the cops to pick him up. However in the heat of the moment what you saw was bound to happen. No blood, no broken bones, just a couple of punches. The theif got what he deserved.

On the last crank mob, my friends decided to ride home to the westside from the first warehouse. Obviously this isn’t the safest idea in the world but none of us on the ride knew how unsafe it would be. I drove home with two other friends because we parked a car downtown so we could drive back safely. Unfortunately, our other friends weren’t able to fit their bikes on the rack nor in the car. On their way home, 4 guys started taunting my friends (2 boys and one girl between the ages of 16-18) saying that they were going to take their bikes. Both boys were chased and one was hit on the head with a club or some type of bat but kept riding because he was wearing a helmet (it really is helpful to wear one). What they didn’t know until they rode back for the girl, was that she was pushed off her bike. when riding back, one of the boys could hear the same sound of a wooden bat hitting a baseball really hard, it turned out to be the contact of her face and a golf club. they hit her because when they demanded for money, she didn’t have any so they attacked her anyway. they ended up fracturing her eye socket, breaking her nose, and her jaw. when one of the boys yelled, the thieves stole the girls iphone and got into a car and drove away. my friends as well as their parents are traumatized by this experience, they said it was like a pig was slaughtered because there was so much blood on the street and the bike (so much that the dad’s car smelled like blood for days when bringing it home while the girl was in the hospital). i visited my friend and could barely recognize her, her face swelled so much that it looked like she had someone elses face as a mask and i could faintly hear her voice through her broken and swollen unmoving mouth, that was the worst for me. the bike thieves never took the bikes but this is how it all started. fortunately, the thieves have been caught and found guilty due to a repeated pattern in the area.

this isn’t my best writing because i wanted to do it quick and is probably confusing so please reply and i’ll try to clarify things

i hope this serves as useful warning of the dangers bike thieves can cause

I can’t disagree more. The reality is that the thief is a sociopath without any remorse or respect for other people’s property. They need to be taught a lesson. And they need to be made an example of. If not violence, then at least some semblance of enforcement of the law. In numerous web searches, I can’t find a single story about the prosecution of bike thieves. I’m assuming they simply get off with a slap on the wrist…

Obviously, my bike was stolen recently. I normally consider myself a centrist democrat, but this weekend I’m a Texas Republican. Hang ‘em all, I say. And I think this guy in the video got exactly what he deserved.

I’m not saying it’s a good solution, I’m just saying that it worked relatively well.

I encounter victims of bike theft on a weekly basis. Just the other day I was at the beach and when walked towards the bike rack on the beach path, a lady was sobbing because someone had cut her cable lock in the span of 20 minutes. She was parked right next to me, I had a U-lock on my bike through the rear triangle.

It shouldn’t matter if your bike was a beater or a nice bike, it doesn’t matter if you used a ulock or cable lock. That’s fucked up that’s it’s coming down to securing your property better than the next person’s in order to avoid being victimized.

In the beginning of summer there were a lot of break-ins in Venice. A few of my friends talked about getting guns. I want one for zombies(IT WILL HAPPEN) but I can’t imagine ever hurting someone else over a TV or Bike or even a laptop full of personal information. It’s just stuff.

I couldn’t even imagine the conversation.

Officer:”So described what happened”

ME:”He tried to take my stuff so I shot him in the face.”