The police can’t be trusted to track our e-bikes

In more innocent times, I’d have responded to the news that police wished to fit tracking devices to electric bicycles with a grunt of approval.

Finally, I’d have thought. Plod has come up with a practical, apparently technologically literate yet relatively inexpensive method to fight low-level crime. Makes a change from the rainbow helmets. Why stop at e-bikes? Track all the cars, too.

These days, however, I cannot help but view such measures with cynicism. But let me first explain. Sarah Kennedy, the chief constable of Merseyside police, has said that policing risked being ‘behind the curve’ because muggers are using e-bikes to carry out their assaults. Scousers were stealing them, she said, in order to rob people and speed away.

‘[E-bikes] cost £2,500,’ she told the Police Superintendents’ Association conference in Stratford-upon-Avon in Warwickshire.