I’ve been dying to weigh in on this.
We have had a ridiculous number of bikes stolen, most of them belonging to our employees. We have cctv cameras outside our shop, so we always get to watch how it happened afterwards, but it’s always too little, too late.
These guys are fast. They walk up in broad daylight, and when they break the lock, they do it so quickly that you can’t tell they aren’t just using a key. One of our employees’ bikes was taken while the guy from the real estate office was having a smoke less than a meter away, the thief just walked up to the bike like he owned it, and in a matter of seconds…he did.
I don’t know if you guys saw on the news a few months back, there was a gang of thieves who rented BMWs and Audis and then went around stealing electric scooters and putting them in the trunk of the car. They figured they weren’t likely to get pulled over in an expensive car, although they did eventually get cornered and caught in front of BuyNow. Anyway, the week before that happened, they tried to steal one of the electric scooters belonging to the real estate agents beside us, and my mother-in-law saw it happening and alerted the real estate guys. They all ran out to beat the tar out of the thieves, but the thieves were armed with knives and after a few stabs they got away. (My father-in-law got paid 200yuan when our CCTV footage was used on the news.)
Which brings us to last week, and tonight. Last week, an employee decided to leave her 1500 yuan bike, unlocked, in front of our shop instead of where my father-in-law watches the bikes. This guy came along and decided he deserved the bike more than she did.
Fast forward to today. It’s after 9pm, and we just closed the shop. My wife, Aiqing, is behind the counter doing the books when all of a sudden she bolts out of the door. After a few minutes, she wasn’t back, so I went outside to find that she had apprehended this same thief that we saw in the camera last week.
He was being held by my father-in-law and Tangkai, our biggest employee, and Aiqing had taken his phone and his bag and was rummaging through it to find his bike-stealing tools. Of course by then there was a large crowd, and she is telling everyone that this guy is a thief and he stole a bike from here last week and he is begging her, on his knees, to give him another chance and not call the police. After a brief consult with her parents, they decided that he could go, but we were keeping the bag and phone, and if he brings back the bike that he stole then we’ll return his stuff. We’ve got an office pool going right now to see if he actually shows up or not. Either way, he knows we know his face around here, so at least that’s one less thief we have to worry about on this block.
As you can see, the tools are pretty rudimentary…he just uses one of the attachments and puts it in the allen wrench and gives it a yank, the lock pops off just like it’s supposed to.
My wife is fearless, foolish, frightening and fabulous.