To catch a bike thief – DON’T try this at home!

It’s been an ongoing epidemic in Toronto for years – thousands of bikes are stolen off city streets with alarming regularity and little hope of recovery.

Jhunalene Vieres was one more in a long list of victims of the common crime, at least for 24 hours.

On Friday, the bike she’s ridden for the last two years was stolen from in front of her workplace downtown.

“My bike was just gone, just like that. Nobody saw it happen. It’s just so upsetting,” Vieres said.

Vieres’ first instincts were to post a photo of the stolen bike online to spread the word.

She turned to the Facebook page ‘Toronto Fixed Gear‘ – having heard the cycling community on the page kept their eyes peeled for stolen bikes. From there, her photo was shared on another Facebook page – ‘Toronto Stolen Bikes‘.

Within hours, Vieres was receiving messages from fellow cyclists that her bike had been spotted.

Kelvin Cosgrave was among those who messaged Vieres, saying he had spotted both the bike and the suspected thieves near Yonge Street and Davenport Road.

Cosgrave and another cyclist met up with Vieres in the area and decided to take matters into their own hands – something police, and common sense, says you should never do.

Nevertheless, they confronted the suspects and that’s when things turned ugly.

“The bike thieves, they spotted us and were walking over to us. The thief with the mohawk, he took out a knife…it was about a seven or nine inch knife,” Cosgrave said.

At that point Vieres lost all hope of getting her bike back and self preservation became her main objective.

“After that I just ran…it’s a knife!” she said.

But Cosgrave and his friend stayed behind and as luck would have it, the suspected thief put away the knife. Cosgrave says the man had more than one allegedly stolen bike with him and simply gave him the one he asked for, without further protest.

“Just like that, my bike is back” said Vieres, although not in one piece – the handlebars and brakes had been removed.

While the case had a somewhat happy ending, Cosgrave and Vieres say the most disappointing thing about the incident is the apathy they faced from police.

They say they requested help from several bike cops nearby, but none would come to their aid. To be clear, officers were not made aware of the presence of a weapon.

“I showed them a photo of the thief even and they said they recognized him but they couldn’t help out (because) they were watching a protest,” he said.

Toronto police could not comment on this specific incident but spokesperson Allyson Douglas Cook said it is up to the discretion of the officers what their priority should be.

She added that she wasn’t aware of the presence of a knife and typically, police would get involved in such a situation.

But Cosgrave feels police simply don’t take bike theft seriously.

“They call it a low priority crime” he said, and Vieres echos those sentiments.

“The City of Toronto, they’re investing in the bike paths and the lanes, wanting Torontonians to commute by bike…it’s hard to reconcile that because they don’t have that interest in bike theft” she said.

Officer Cook says on the contrary, bike thefts are taken very seriously.

“That’s why we have our bike registration program…we encourage cyclists that when they have a new bicycle to register it online and we often times find bicycles this way,” she said.