Update 6 November 2014: “This article is not related to the Scientist Dr Andrew Lewis who matriculated at St Catharines in 2004”
Cambridge University student, Andrew “Lewi” Lewis, of St. Catherine’s College has today posted an account on the internet about what happened when he took a cycle, which he now believes to be a police “bait” bike, from outside a Cambridge City Centre nightclub. His account was posted at 0315 in the morning. He wrote:
So I was out on Tuesday night, came out of the nightclub fairly the worse for drink, and didn’t really want to walk home. Because of this, I looked around the bikes that were left outside the club, and found one unlocked. I took it, cycled home, and on the way was stopped by a police car. 2 members of the police force emerged, asked me who I was and where I was from, and if it was my bike. I told the truth, that I had ‘found’ the bike, and was then told that they had been following me on CCTV for the entire time since I took the bike, and had to ‘blat across the city’ to catch me. I was then told off and was ordered to put it back, which I did. I have no issues with any of this – in fact I was let off quite lightly for my crimes.
My view:
- Andrew Lewis ought not to have been let off so lightly, bike crime is a serious problem in Cambridge and the police need to tackle it robustly.
- The police need to be more effectively targeting organised and bulk bike crime; I can’t imagine unlocked bait bikes working, entrapping and catching the likes of Andrew Lewis isn’t getting to grips with the problem.
Cycle theft is about 15% of reported crime in the city *, typically Cambridge University students are seen as the victims, rather than the perpretators of it.
I agree with Andrew Lewis, he was let off incredibly lightly, letting someone off without any action, not even a fine for no-lights, appears incredible, especially for a target driven police force. Andrew Lewis went public with his exploits as he is critical of the police’s actions, he is concerned that they are wasting resources on easy targets by dealing with people like him, and he also feels he has been entrapped by the operation and would not have committed a crime had the police not placed an unlocked bike in his path.
If the police are not taking robust action against those they catch taking the bait bikes then their whole operation appears to be a complete waste of their, and the city council’s resources (The council provide CCTV coverage). I also agree with Andrew Lewis that using unlocked bikes is not likely to help them catch those responsible for the large scale bike thefts in the city.
One problem is the police repeatedly deny that there is any organised element to bike thefts in the city; they think most are committed by opportunists like Andrew Lewis. Even the City Council’s CCTV manager, Martin Beaumont, who clearly has a good perspective on events, disagrees – speaking to a council committee in January he said he believed there was an organised element and bikes were being removed from the city en-mass. At the August 2008 North Area Committee meeting Cllr Upstone asked about how cycle crime was to be tackled, suggesting that the police should focus on organised and bulk cycle thefts. The police, represented by Inspector Hutchinson, said they did not believe there was any organised/bulk element to cycle thefts in Cambridge saying: “there is no white van full of bikes leaving the city every week”. I have questioned if they still take this point of view, and how they can justify it at many occasions since, including at an Arbury ward police meeting in October 2008 where PC Lewis repeated the police line saying: “most thefts were opportunistic”, (she publicly announced the current use of bait bikes in the city at that meeting too).
Andrew Lewis, pictured above in his manifesto photograph for a “JCR” position, is also “Gents Social Secretary” at a University Sailing Club and is his college’s ticket rep for Bigfishents which organises student club nights. He is also involved in the Oxford and Cambridge University ski and snowboard trip. It is possible that the police let Andrew Lewis off lightly on the expectation that he will be dealt with robustly by his college; I oppose that stance particularly if there is no assurance of fair and timely due-process within the college. I think everyone ought be treated equally by the police and legal system. Schools and universities ought be able to deal with some minor “offences” internally, but only when they are very minor, below an agreed threshold and do not involve wider society (eg. Playground scuffles should not result in police involvement).
8 responses to “Cambridge University Student Takes Police Bait Bike from City Centre”
I would say certainly an organised element, when 3 bikes disappear from outside your house in one night with all their locks cropped off!
Nowadays its just vandalism where they jump on the rear wheel to buckle it 🙁
Andrew Lewis has written to me to say he is particularly worried about University / College action as he was: “supposed to be obeying curfew this week due to an unrelated incident”, presumably he is referring to a punishment imposed by the University.
Apparently the police stopped using bait bikes in Cambridge three months ago.
I don’t know if this includes officers using their own bikes or just the high tech motion detector and tracker equipped bikes.
Mr Lewis has written to me again. He’s asking me to anonymise this article on the grounds that his “juvenile” actions may affect his employability.
He’s now a researcher and lectures at Cambridge University.While it was that request which brought me back to this article tonight I thought I’d add a note saying that one person had their bike stolen from outside the Cycling Campaign Parliamentary hustings on the 6th of April and during the hustings someone recounted a scene they’d witnessed where the police caught someone on a stolen bike and told them to just put it down and leave it by the side of the road as “it wasn’t worth getting arrested over”. There’s clearly a need to get the police to take cycle crime more seriously in the city and this article is clearly relevant. It’s also a more interesting angle and approach to the problem and gets more people considering it than a dry article about police statistics does.
Steal a bike, and you’re a thief. Admit to this openly in public, you’re an idiot. Giving an idiotic thief a job as a lecturer at one of Britain’s leading Universities stinks.
Mr Lewis has told me he is not a lecturer.
In some countries criminal records and court records are very public information and remain so in perpetuity. In the UK the information tribunal have ruled that releasing details of long out of date court orders is not permissible due to data protection legislation, we have a very complex position.
If I go into the Cambridge magistrates court and witness someone get an ASBO tomorrow; as long as there are no reporting restrictions (which there most probably would be if a child was the subject of the order) I could publish the fact the individual got the ASBO; in many cases the police and councils actively publish such information themselves. What I can’t do is obtain details of ASBOs which were ordered say five ago and write about them now.
The problem with this ICO ruling is that it doesn’t account for things like online archives of newspapers or indeed websites like mine which keep their old articles available. The existence of such persistent publications in my view makes a mockery of the ICO’s position.
Logically I think that the problem is not with the information being available, but with society. People should be prepared to allow criminals to reform and accept that criminals can change. It’s really important that as society we do that, but it’s something a lot of individuals find hard. We can’t stop people finding out about the past; we just as we can’t order librarians to cut out articles from archived newspapers we can’t order online news outlets to delete certain stories after a period of time.
In practice I think that so long as people are prejudiced against people who have committed crimes, even though a lot of time has passed and they have reformed, it will be necessary to have safeguards to ensure the state, “forgets” about minor crime, police interactions, and penalties after a certain period of time. In the UK our law and legal system hasn’t yet properly got to grips with “expunging offences from the record”. I’m strongly opposed to the database state and one key problem which needs addressing that the police and wider state at the moment “never forget” and I think that’s a real problem as it doesn’t allow people to reform.
I think there’s a big difference between information held by the state though and that held by individuals or by the press.
I’m personally very angry that Cambridge police are indefinitely keeping a record of an occasion when they stopped me and asked me to account for my actions. I am particularly annoyed by the fact that their record does not even include my explanation of my actions anyone reading the record would not have the full picture. I have raised the problem at local public meetings discussing policing; Liberal Democrats on the North Area Committee have even heard from a police officer calling such indefinite retention of data “proportional” and they’ve sat there and said nothing.
While I want the police to expunge their records of me being stopped, I wouldn’t call for a Cambridge News article mentioning it to be removed and wouldn’t expect to get very far if I tried.
In the case of Andrew Lewis; now my article has been published it will never be fully removed from the internet, it will have been picked up by all sorts of computers across the world some of which will probably republish it in the future as internet archives. Andrew Lewis’ original usenet posting describing his antics is, at the time of writing, still available too.
As Andrew Lewis stood for an elected position in a Students’ Union (JCRs in Cambridge are formally Students’ Unions under the Education Act) there is a legitimate public interest in his activities; though the question is raised of if should someone one who enters public life be able to step back from it? Is the fact he is now being paid out of taxpayer’s money for his work at the University material to determining if this article should stay up, again I think that’s a key factor in saying there’s a public interest in it remaining.
One question I’ve got is – is he a reformed character – would it help him, and society if I removed his name from the article? Or might it be detrimental? It certainly raises interesting and important questions.
Hi Richard. That’s an interesting post and raises some pertinent issues.
One quick question: you say that the Andrew Lewis who made the usenet post is paid from public funds and works at the university. Are you certain of this? The reason I ask is that there is another Andrew Lewis in Cambridge who is nothing to do with the usenet posting, and this guy is a researcher and occasional lecturer. I think it’s important that we’re clear that this second guy is nothing to do with the alleged drunken cycle theft.
Hope this helps. 🙂
Daniel
Cambridge, UK