an interesting video.
there's nothing illegal about what the bloggers did - it's perfectly legal to leave a bike on the street, filming it, curious to see what happens.
i do question how much common sense those guys have, wandering around at night in the worst couple blocks of the tenderloin. although the illegal act is the stealing of the bike, i have to wonder how they (and the officer!) would feel had the officer had been injured trying to recover the bike. seems like the reason to make the video was to get attention rather than do anything about bike theft, since they clearly agreed to not press charges when speaking to the police. although convictions are rare for property theft like this that's NOT the typical process.
Hey video maker here. Yeah, obviously that would have been terrible. If the cops would have been injured I probably would have quit YouTube and done anything I could do right the wrong. But, we also did what we could to make this as safe and cop free as possible.
The plan going into it was to...
1. Get the bike stolen during the day (this was the 4th time we left the bike out, once in Nob Hill, twice at this same spot but on afternoons)
2. Be prepared to drive around to wherever the bike went
3. Buy it back with cash to keep the police out of the story
I know everyone in SF would expect it would go to the Tenderloin, but talking to other people to prepare before hand, a lot of bikes actually end up in soma and the Mission. I think anyone would feel more comfortable buying it back in those neighborhoods, rather than in the gnarliest part of the TL. We would have too. I still wish I could have just bought it back with cash, but it was getting late, it ended up in the one block of the city I hoped it wouldn't, I still felt like we'd need more money, I also had to keep my friend shooting the video for free safe, no clue where ATMs are in the TL, etc, etc.
Once it got taken to the Tenderloin, obviously we still wanted to finish the video. Additionally, maybe all the city workers (black and green outfits?) around made it feel safer? The recovery was foolish, I won't be doing another one of these videos again, but I felt like we didn't do anything wilder than most people that get their bike stolen and then try and get it back. If you look at Reddit threads for stolen bikes, no one balks when people recommend checking out the TL, Civic Center or any other place for stolen goods.
Additionally, we weren't going to fight anyone for it, we would have just ran if stuff got nuts. We talked about that too, but it didn't really play a factor and we just looked like nerds talking about hypotheticals. I have about ~10 hours of footage for this video, and ~10 minutes made it in to the final video.
The reason for not pressing charges was for two reasons.
1. I just don't want this to be some gotcha journalism YouTube channel. The main reason for making this was because 95% of people I talked to said even if you used a tracker thieves would just quickly find it. This obviously wasn't the case. My bike might have been parts the following day, but a couple hours is enough time to track it down if you know it's gone. We could make bike thief in SF less ubiquitous if bikes were constantly getting recovered.
2. I think the cops felt more comfortable recovering the bike if they weren't pressing charges. At least that's the feeling I got. Regardless, I didn't want someone going to jail for a crime that was sort-of setup. But... I think bicyclists have been brain washed into feeling bad for leaving their bikes outside. No one shames you if you don't leave your car in Nob Hill in a secure, private parking garage.
Sorry for the novel!
af