String of dirt bike thefts under investigation in communities south of Boston
BROCKTON - A string of dirt bike thefts is under investigation south of Boston.
A Plymouth mom is outraged. "They violated my home, my children. This whole ordeal has just been awful," said the woman, who does not want to be identified. On Friday, she spent most of the afternoon with Brockton police going to different homes, trying to track down her children's dirt bikes that were stolen from their home on Tuesday.
"They snipped the mechanism for the lock and they took the lock. My oldest worked and paid for that bike himself it means a lot to them," she cried. She said the thieves may have targeted her bikes because she had posted one for sale on social media. A few days later, they were stolen.
It turns out, she's not alone. Recently, several other bikes were stolen in the same fashion, including from a woman and a gentleman who also did not want to be identified. "I am happy I got it back. It was stolen out of my shed," he said.
Fortunately, he had Air Tags on his bike which led police to a home in Brockton on Ford Street. Here, police uncovered a handful of stolen bikes. "I recommend anybody who has bikes to put Air Tags on them. It's easy and it worked, and I just hope people don't continue to do this," the man said.
Refusing to give up, this Plymouth mom in pursuit of her own was able to track down three other stolen bikes that belonged to her neighbor's kids. Police said a lot of these bikes are a hot item to steal, especially as the weather gets warmer, because a lot of young people ride them throughout the streets of Brockton, causing havoc.
"We have received some complaints this year about these illegal street vehicles operating on the road but not to the extent of years' past. It is early in the season," Darren Duarte, a spokesperson for the Brockton Police Department, said. Brockton adopted a new ordinance this year that allows officers to impose civil penalties on those riders and impound the vehicles. "It's a first step and it gives police more teeth in fighting that battle," Duarte said.
Meanwhile, the mom from Plymouth is not giving up. If she found her neighbors' bikes, she knows her children's bikes can't be far away. "We've been investigating and recovered the bikes stolen from someone else so that's win. We still don't have ours but maybe we are close. There's little kids that happy today because we found their bikes," she said.