r/Glasgow Tools

I’ll preface this by stating that all of this info has already been passed to the police.

I had my bike stolen from Battlefield on July 16th. It was chained up inside my close with a heavy duty combination lock; still not sure how they got it, but it seems to have been a targeted attack as only my bike was stolen out of many others in the close which had less robust protection (one was not even chained up at all).

There was an abandoned OVO Citybike lying outside my close which lay there for several days before being picked up by OVO. I’m pretty sure this was used by the thief, so before it was picked up I photographed it, recorded the bike number and called OVO to ask if they could refer the details of the last person who rented it to the police if required. They said they could, and all this info was passed to the police as well.

I also put adverts out on Gumtree Shpock and Facebook essentially giving a detailed description of my bike with pictures and stating “Do not buy”, and reported it to the local bike shops.

I wasn’t expecting anything to come of it, as this isn’t the first bike I’ve had stolen in Glasgow, but eventually on July 22nd I got a phone call from someone responding to the gumtree advert stating at first that they had found the bike “in a ditch” and implied that they were near Newlands South Church at the time. After I pressed for more information they became abusive and admitted to stealing the bike before a female voice in the background said “don’t be wide” and they hung up.

Fast forward to yesterday and I got another phone call off the same person. They initially said “Bike was with them at their address” and “You’re not getting your bike back until you give me money”. I tried to arrange a meeting place with the aim of phoning 999 afterwards as suggested to me by the police, but the caller would not take it seriously, just started giving non-specific locations around Southside.

After this, they were essentially just trying to taunt me and talking nonsense, but I did hear some things which interested me:

- Mentioned “West side”; “West side boys do it better”
- “ <unintelligible> Young team”
- May have mentioned Milton. I’m not sure about this though - I actually thought they said “Pilton” but this isn’t a place in Glasgow while Milton is.

A female voice then abruptly shouted “Enough!” and they hung up.

The caller sounded young (I’d estimate teens or early 20s), white, neddy, relatively “high/soft” voice.

Usually I accept stolen bikes have pretty much no chance of recovery but all the stuff that’s gone on in this case has put me on the warpath.

Anyone has any ideas about this, please let me know.