Bike Registration Becomes Mandatory On USC Campus
All USC faculty, students and staff who own a bicycle and park it on the campus now are required to register their bikes, according to the USC Department of Public Safety.
This requirement aims to help DPS to identify bikes if they are lost, stolen, recovered or impounded. “There is a chance (to find the lost bicycle),” said a DPS officer, “ if we find somebody riding a bike, and if he committed a crime, we’ll see whether it is his bike or whether it belongs to somebody else. If it belongs to somebody else, we take it and we find who the bike belongs to, according to the registration number.”
The registration process is simple: it can be completed on the DPS website for free. After the registration, a receipt will be emailed to the bike owner. Then he or she will bring the copy of the receipt to the DPS located at PSA on campus to get a decal to paste on the frame of the bike.
There are more than 4,500 bicycle parking spaces throughout the USC campus. “Bicycle stuff is the No.1 crime on campus,” the officer said. An email sent to students by the DPS said that the USC community may have the largest concentration of bicycles in the city of Los Angeles, making USC a target for opportunists who steal bicycles.