DENVER — Just after midnight on Tuesday, Nov. 19, 2019, a huge banana-yellow moving truck with the company name "Denver Small Moves" emblazoned on the side circled a neighborhood bicycle shop. Surveillance video shows a man dressed in black get out of the truck and creep across the sidewalk, casing the expensive merchandise in the store windows of Base Camp Cyclery. He then jiggles a loose security fence, returns to his truck and takes a practice run before he full throttles in reverse through the fence, obliterating the storefront.
It was one of eight times Base Camp Cyclery was hit before year's end.
“I was massively stressed out,” owner Harley McClellan told The Gazette. “I didn’t want to go to sleep wondering which night the alarm would go off.”
Since just before the pandemic, smash and grabbers have terrorized bike shop owners up and down the Front Range. The Colorado Attorney General's Office launched an investigation dubbed "Operation Vicious Cycle," resulting in the arrests of eight men believed tied to an organized criminal ring with links to Mexico, where bicycles stolen from Colorado are turned around and offered on Facebook at premium prices.
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Metro Denver Crime Stoppers
Anyone with information is asked to call Crime Stoppers at 720-913-7867 or visit metrodenvercrimestoppers.com. Tipsters can remain anonymous and may be eligible for a reward of up to $2,000.
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From there, an awards committee reviews the information provided and, if the information leads to an arrest, the tipster will be notified. Rewards can be collected using the code numbers received when the tip was originally submitted.
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