The Des Moines Police Department said Tuesday that it will launch a free bike registration program in 2019 to help return stolen bikes to their owners.
Currently, the Des Moines Fire Department collects a small fee to register bicycles.
Des Moines police Sgt. Paul Parizek said hundreds of bicycles are stolen in the metro each summer, and many of them lay unclaimed in storage at the police department."When you look at some of these bicycles in here, there are some very high-quality bikes in there,” Parizek said.
Parizek said unclaimed bikes are auctioned off or sometimes destroyed, and the free and voluntary online bicycle registration launching in 2019 could prevent that.