Swan Hill Police will be giving bike owners the opportunity to engrave their bikes this Sunday to help prevent bike theft in town.
Youth resource officer and Leading Senior Constable Andrew Downes said reports of bike thefts were steadily rising this year.
“Unfortunately theft of push bikes has been occurring in our area and there has been a spike this year with numbers of thefts slowly trending up; we’ve found it doesn’t matter whether it’s a $20 push bike or a $2000 bike,” he said.
“We want to reduce these rates but we need the community to come on board with us.”
Lead Sen-Constable Downes said one of the key aspects in reducing bicycle theft was being able to quickly return a bike to its owner.
Police want to be able to quickly match a stolen bike to its owner by engraving the owner’s driver licence number onto their bike.
“This way we can run it through our system and give it back to the owner very quickly; without that driver’s licence number it’s very difficult to return the bike,” he said.
Free engraving of driver’s licence numbers onto bikes will be held on Sunday at George Lay Park between 10am and noon.
To read more of this story, grab a copy of Friday’s Guardian (October 28th).
