This did not happen to me, but some recent discussions and events makes me wonder.

Fairly New PU Truck in parking lot with two very nice bikes standing in rack in the bed. Chained, cabled and NY locked. Tailgate closed and locked.

You witness a guy with tools and bolt cutters climb in the bed of the truck, tailgate closed, and start attempting to cut chains and cables and locks.

What would you do?

Calling the po-po is a waste of your cell time.
They won't show up to anything unless it's free doughnuts.

(tell the poll leece when you asked the guys, "what's up?" they flashed a gun at you, for faster response time... maybe)

I would walk up to “dude” and ask what’s up. Most tweaker s will start their spew off shit saying Steve the owner asked them to come get the bikes because they lost their keys and are stuck so he need to cut the locks to bring the bike to the owner and it’s ok because Steve said so. Also call cops before hand.
I own bikes and hate tweakers.

Run up, scare him, then pee on the bikes to assert dominance. Make sure he knows you saw them first.

Had a similar thing happen outside of a Home Depot where someone was trying to coathanger fish the door lock of a truck. Going through it asking the person is really going to end up with someone saying "yeah it's mine" and the answer is if you are going to take their word for it.

I was going to just stay at a distance, call the police and record the license plate if it got driven off. Although the person managed to get in before i parked and the body language (i.e not immediately hotwiring or rummaging through the glove box or areas for stuff) didn't really translate to me that this person was looking to steal anything and managed to turn over the engine immediately. So just left it at that being a high probability that he just locked himself out.

Really just take a photo of guy and bikes, call the police, give info and move on. If you stop the person and get into a confrontation and it really was their bikes, you might end up in the news or on a reddit board of "idiot CCW guy pretends to be a hero. LOL what's wrong with America?"

Most high end bikes cross the threshold into felony theft territory. That makes things a bit easier to work with, in terms of making a citizens arrest, confronting them, using force if need be, etc.

pro tip: if you haven't registered all your bikes on bikeindex.org yet, it's quick and easy and free to do. just requires the serial number and description. i'm involved in my local bicycle community and have helped reunite a large number of bikes taken back from thieves. bike index helps tremendously in that effort. it might take a week, it might take two years, but seeing people get their bike back after it being stolen is priceless.

I went trough a similar situation a while ago.

Lowe's parking lot in Funeral Way.
Dude on a small-wheel bicycle is riding circles around parked, unoccupied sedan with unlocked trunk.
Then he gets closer and opens the trunk... then closes it...
Then he drives away, then comes back again...

I'm pulling out my phone - to call 911...

Then comes a woman - apparently the driver of the vehicle...
Then dude loads his micro bike into the trunk and both get into the car and ride away.

I would definitely call the police, they do in fact work for more than free doughnuts.

I also would not lie about a gun, since they actually may respond slower in order to wait for additional units.

Sometimes the cops have better things to do than respond to a property crime. I have been an hour late responding to a shoplift because I was booking a felony assault suspect.

There's an older youtube video about this. A guy decides to see what people would do and records his staged bike theft. He does it on buisy city streets with a grinder, hacksaw, bolt cutters, etc. No body cared, at one point a cop stopped and even helped him.

On a more serious note, I have had to break into my own vehicle before on more than one occasion. So, being both a non-risk taker that has performed shady-looking but legitimate tasks, and a gun-carrying gray man, I would simply make a mental note of what I'm seeing, maybe take a picture, and go about minding my own business, provided no person is being physically harmed. I'm carrying a loaded firearm. Anything I get myself into has the potential to get ugly. The bar for involving myself is set higher than potential bike theft.

that video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ooa3NVf ... =emb_title

Watch while calling police, follow him with the bikes to his rig, while he loads stolen merch, you flatten his tires, preferably more than one

note, I have ZERO qualms taking the law into my own hands, the law is designed to protect the innocent, but is useless if WE do not enforce law and order.

Ask him how much would he sell them for?

This, I thought this as I was scrolling reading replies. Good job on beating me to it. LOL

I am not so sure about stopping a petty crime in progress. People don't respect police, why would they respect me? And I am not a small guy by any means. But I am going home, I don't care about your bikes. I do care about my kids having a dad.

Pulling out my 9mm? 100% expect to be crucified for this. Even if these were your bikes and you were advanced on. What is that saying? Up is down and left is right....