The suspicion that some of the drivers are not rubbish collectors but organised bicycle thieves is not misplaced: ADFC (German Cycling Association) spokesperson Axel Mörer-Funk says the increased number of bicycles stolen when bulky rubbish collections take place continues to be a problem.

Katja Bachelier, who lives with her family in Poppelsdorf, can attest to this. She arrived home at 5pm on the evening before the latest bulky rubbish collection. Bachelier says her son’s bike was in front of the house locked to a stand. “I was sitting with my family eating our evening meal, when we heard a noise through the tilted window, which suggested someone was tampering with the bike stands using a tool, possibly a bolt cutter.” She stood up immediately, but it was too late – the bike was already gone.

“During the evening we stopped around 20 rubbish collectors in their vehicles and asked them to open the door to the storage area. There were several bikes in roughly half of the vehicles, of which only a few looked as if they belonged to the rubbish collection,” said Bachelier.

Some of the rubbish collectors told her to go to the “collection points for salvagers from Romania and Poland in Auerberg and on Römerstraße.” Bachelier spoke to the police but they told her they could not help as they were only allowed to ask a driver to open his van when there were grounds for suspicion.

The theft of bikes during bulky rubbish collections is a country-wide problem. One driver in Auerberg, who did not want to be named, said, “there are some rubbish collectors who take anything that is not nailed down.” The salvagers swap items at the collection points, as some prefer collecting particular items, he said. “I have seen good bikes that no-one would throw away.”

One of his colleagues said that stolen bikes were sometimes distributed among several vans to minimise the risk at a police check. “When the police do a search, they say they swapped the stolen goods with an unknown collector.”

Mörer-Funk wants the police to do more to curb these activities. The police have been told repeatedly about bicycle thefts at bulky rubbish collection times, but special checks are still not carried out. It does not seem to be a priority for the authorities at the moment.

Police spokesman Simon Rott said police generally needed grounds for suspecting a crime to search people and vehicles. He said police had checked rubbish collectors in the past and had generally found, “old and damaged bicycles that had not been reported as stolen.” Police keep a particular eye out for vans with number plates from outside Bonn or abroad and regularly check the collection points in Auerberg and on Römerstraße. In general, Rott said, police had not noticed more bicycles being stolen during bulky rubbish collections than at other times.

(Original text: Ayla Jacob, Philipp Königs. Translated by Kate Carey)