Raid on Alleged Bicycle-Theft Operation Points to Vast Problem : Police: Investigators say they cannot keep pace with culprits, who are growing bolder as the value of items that people buy increases.

Beneath his nondescript apartment in downtown Ventura, Joey Charles Debolt allegedly spent his time tearing apart and rebuilding stolen bicycles, from tired one-speeds to sleek racing models.

Police say Debolt, a 28-year-old man with a scruffy, reddish beard, acquired the bikes by trading drugs to the city’s addicts, transients and thieves. He would then resell the bicycles for $15 to $20.

“Everybody’s looking for a good deal,” said Debolt, who admitted selling the bikes, but denied dealing drugs or knowing that the bikes were stolen. “They’re from friends who didn’t want them.”

Inside Debolt’s cluttered garage at 558 E. Thompson Ave., police found a collection of stripped handlebars, gear parts, wheel rims, bicycle seats, tools and cans of royal blue paint. Eight bikes were seized, including two identified as stolen.

“This was a butcher shop for bicycles,” Ventura Police Detective Jeff Killion said during the Oct. 13 morning raid. “All of it’s stolen. All of it came from somewhere.”

Debolt’s operation is one sign of a persistent and widespread problem, which Ventura County authorities say they often lack the time and resources to thoroughly investigate.

Once considered a mischievous crime of playgrounds, parks and shopping malls, bike thefts are now seen as a lucrative way to turn a quick buck. With the soaring popularity of expensive mountain bikes, the nature of the crime has changed.

Police and bike shop owners say the problem is getting worse, although the number of bikes reported stolen in Ventura County has remained steady in recent years.

Detectives suspect a thriving black market exists for bikes and bike parts that are resold on the street corner, at flea markets in Los Angeles or even shipped out of state. Others may go to small-time chop shops like the one allegedly run by Debolt, who is in Ventura County Jail facing felony charges.

“More often than not, people are stealing these things for the profit rather than just the opportunity or the convenience of riding home,” Ventura Police Sgt. Gary McCaskill said.

And as the money motive grows more attractive, the thieves are growing bolder.

As more people remember to lock their bikes in commercial areas, bike thefts in residential neighborhoods have risen, police say.

“A lot of them are being taken right out of the garages, front porches and sides of houses,” said Sgt. David Paige, who supervises the misdemeanor crimes unit of the East Valley sheriff’s station in Thousand Oaks.

“People are pretty good about closing their garages at night, but what they’re forgetting is crooks drive around during the daytime and see what’s in there,” he said.

Bike robberies, while less common than thefts and burglaries, are also on the rise among juveniles, said Patricia J. Kelliher, the deputy district attorney who supervises juvenile cases.

Usually, two or more older children will overpower a younger one and ride away on the bike. Kelliher said she suspects that juveniles are also stealing bikes for profit.

“It’s not that they specifically want the bike,” she said. “I think they’re stealing the bikes to sell them or sell the parts and get money.”

One Oxnard cyclist even had his custom-racing bike stolen after being struck by a hit-and-run driver on East 5th Street. Police have no idea who might have taken Trevor Meyring’s red, yellow and green bike while the 19-year-old lay on the payment scraped and bruised.

Even as police acknowledge the seriousness of the problem, bike thefts still fall low on the priority list because most departments are scraping to keep black-and-whites on the streets.

Paige said bike thefts are sometimes considered a lightweight crime because each theft is handled individually. “The big picture is literally thousands of bikes” stolen, he said.

Even when departments can afford to investigate bike thefts, there’s usually little information to go on. Victims rarely see the theft and no physical evidence is left.

An even bigger obstacle, police say, is a lack of serial numbers on so many stolen bike reports.

Without a serial number, the chances of getting a bike back are slim. Even if a bike is recovered, it is almost impossible to identify without a serial number because of the sheer volume that are stolen.

In the Ventura police property room, bikes take up more space than anything else.

Of the 161 recovered last year, only four were returned to owners. Another 121 were sold at a police auction and the rest were claimed by the finders.

This year, two of the 144 bikes turned in to Ventura police have been returned to owners.

Mike Cicchi, co-owner of the Newbury Park Bike Shop, encourages his customers to engrave the letters “CDL” and their driver’s license number on the bike next to the serial number.

That helps police return the bike to the owner and just might discourage a thief, Cicchi said.

“The tough thing for us,” he said, “is that we can’t get the word out to the homeowners that this is happening.”

Being victimized in any sort of crime can leave a person feeling violated, vulnerable and angry. Bike thefts are no exception. While many people form attachments to their high-tech, shock-equipped mountain bikes, others rely on old-fashioned one-speeds to get around.

“Having a bike stolen for a kid is like having a car stolen for an adult,” UCLA psychologist Irene Goldenberg said. “It produces the same sort of tensions and anxieties.

“It’s their means of transportation, frequently, and their most expensive and valuable possession.”

Blaming the child can often make the problem worse.

“It’s the same issue when a wife comes home and has banged up the car,” she said. “The person feels bad about it. It doesn’t help to heap on your own frustrations.”

Experts also say it’s impossible to measure the long-term effects on a child who has a bike stolen. “It could be the worst thing that happens in their life, or it could be just a tough struggle,” Goldenberg said.

For adults, especially those who have taken precautions, bicycle thefts can be no less disconcerting.

Thousand Oaks resident Dan Potter, 24, discovered his $2,000 purple mountain bike with titanium parts was missing from his garage last month.

Potter, who works as a grocery checkout clerk, had put the new bike in his closed garage. But the thief walked through a back-yard gate and into the garage’s unlocked side door.

“Not many people would do something like that,” he said.

Ventura Police Capt. Ken Thompson knows first-hand what it’s like to be a victim. While he mowed a small patch of grass in his back yard on a Saturday, someone sneaked into his open garage and took his wife’s $300 mountain bike.

After discovering that the bike was missing, Thompson said he jumped in his car and raced around his east Ventura neighborhood looking for the culprits.

“Believe me, if it’s your bicycle, you do feel victimized,” said Thompson, who never recovered the bike despite offering a free dinner to the officer who found it. “People’s bicycles are more than just some simple, little thing.”

Angst over the loss of an old maroon bike with white-wall tires even inspired a song called “Bicycle Thief” by the Sacramento-based band, Cake.

Between improvised verses, singer John McCrea sings the chorus:

“Bicycle thieves are the worst kind of thieves. They stole my bike when I didn’t have money. Bicycle thieves are the worst kind of thieves. They cut my lock and they left me with nothing !”

While bike thefts occur throughout the county, some cities are hit harder than others. Predictably, Oxnard, which leads the county in crime, also ranks as its bike-theft capital.

Between 1989 and 1991, bike thefts in Oxnard rose from 584 to 652. The number dropped to 620 in 1992 and, so far this year, there have been only 347 thefts reported.

Among the cities that contract with the Sheriff’s Department for police service, Thousand Oaks, with 114, had the most bikes stolen last year. Camarillo ranked second with 85 and Fillmore had the fewest with 22.

In Simi Valley, bike thefts jumped from 198 in 1989 to 270 in 1991. But this year, the figures have dropped significantly. Only 131 had been reported as of Oct. 15.

While those numbers provide a benchmark for bike-theft trends, law enforcement officials caution that they do not show the full picture. Most cities can only count bikes stolen in thefts and have no way of adding up the number taken in burglaries. The latter are filed simply as residential burglaries, and not by the type of property taken.

No statistics were available for the city of Ventura.

Lt. Don Arth said the Ventura Police Department’s crime analysis unit is not set up to track stolen bike reports.

“You would end up having to physically sit down and read each and every report,” he said. “You’d go blind doing that.”

Occasionally, police get lucky and catch a bike thief in action. Other times, they get tips like the ones that led Ventura detectives to arrest Joey Debolt.

Charged with possession of drugs for sale and attempted receiving stolen property--both felonies--Debolt is scheduled to appear Wednesday for a preliminary hearing.

The raid on his garage and apartment came after police heard that he had a reputation on the street as “the guy you trade property with for crank,” Detective John Leach said. Crank is the slang name for methamphetamine.

“Patrolmen kept telling us they’d seen him down there coming and going with bicycles,” Leach said. “It was kind of like his sign had lit up saying ‘Come get me.’ ”