The Bike Thieves of Burlington, Vermont

A hunt for stolen goods has put citizens and business owners in the center of a debate about policing and a growing, sometimes violent, problem with crime.

By Michael Corkery
Photographs by Andres Kudacki
Reporting from Burlington, Vt.

Nov. 12, 2022

Burlington, Vt., is a bike-friendly city. There are multiple bike stores, a network of bright green bike lanes on many major streets and a waterfront bike path with views of the dazzling sunsets over Lake Champlain and the Adirondack Mountains.

Burlington’s bike culture and natural beauty convinced Julie Williams to settle there after graduating from the University of Vermont 10 years ago. She also liked the city’s progressive politics, which started the career of Bernie Sanders, a former Burlington mayor. “I feel like I fit in here,” said Ms. Williams, who operates Betty’s Bikes, which she named after her grandmother.

But this spring, she noticed a troubling trend: A large number of people were calling the store asking whether Ms. Williams had seen their missing bicycles. “I was getting five or six calls a day,” she said.

Bike theft has long been a problem in Burlington, a city of about 45,000 residents, but it seemed to intensify over the summer and into the fall. Bikes were disappearing from front porches, garages and bike racks. Mountain bikes, carbon-fiber race bikes, children’s bikes — all gone. The university warned students returning to campus that about 220 bikes, valued at $267,000, had been stolen in and around the city since June.

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