Stolen bicycle from Craigslist ad found in U-District homeless camp

Last week, Dori pointed out his favorite ad on Craigslist. The ad showed a stolen bicycle that had been taken from the ad writer’s nephew in Wallingford. Dori appreciated the way that the ad accurately — and somewhat colorfully — summed up the city’s crime and homelessness problems.

Lost my gluteus, this bike was STOLEN last week by some Meth/Heroin addicted, mentally ill, needle littering, crapping outside my office, freeloading, douchebag BUM. Thank God for our City attorney Pete Holmes and the Seattle City Council, who are not prosecuting misdemeanor crimes anymore. They’d rather give my friend Eric a ticket for parking 12″ inches away from the curb in Ballard – while the Bums in this town can desecrate our public property w/o even a “warning”. This is my nephews bike – if you see it around please send me a pic of the guy riding it and where I might find him – so that I may go have a chat with him…………

A few days later, Dori was happy to hear that this was one rare story of a Seattle crime that had a happy ending — the bike’s owner had found his missing property.

However, Dori was less happy — though no less surprised — to hear where the stolen bicycle was located.

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“[Police] went in and did kind of a shakedown of a homeless camp right along by U-Village along the Burke-Gilman Trail, and found four stolen bicycles and a lot of other goods … barbecues, tools,” said Bob Toepfer, the father of the bicycle theft victim.

After finding the bicycle, Toepfer walked through the camp looking for tools that had been stolen from him. Despite receiving confused looks from camp dwellers, he proceeded to look for his property, but did not find the items.

“I just couldn’t believe how many people were living there, right along the trail. My daughter goes to school there — it’s essentially a stone’s throw from the University of Washington,” he said. “And [the city is] harboring crime, I believe — it’s not like they don’t know that these people are stealing every night.”

In response, he wrote an email to Councilmember Rob Johnson telling him of his serious concerns with having a camp like that in such a populated area.

“The gist of the letter was that I challenged any of those people on the council that are in the northeast area to come out with me to that camp and walk through it and tell me that’s okay — for those people to be basically living right along the Burke-Gilman trail among all types of stolen paraphernalia,” Toepfer said.

A week later, Toepfer has not gotten a response and grows less hopeful each day that he will receive one. It’s unfortunate, Toepfer said, because he would like to speak to politicians about getting homeless people into housing.

“They don’t take seriously people like me,” Toepfer said. “I’m not saying that we should throw these people in jail; I’m saying that we shouldn’t allow what’s going on.”

He looks forward to next year, when he hopes that the majority of the Seattle City Council will be voted out of office.

“They’re out of touch, I think, with the majority of Seattleites,” Toepfer said.

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