Charges won’t be filed in case UWPD believes involves 600 stolen bikes

The Dane County district attorney’s office has decided not to file charges in a University of Wisconsin police theft case involving more than 1,000 bikes that were found in a bike shop in March.

Police said the investigation started in May 2014 and resulted in warrants being used to search a bike shop in Muscoda, an apartment in the town of Madison, a storage unit in the city of Madison and a farm in the town of Windsor. More than 1,000 bikes were found and UW police believed about 600 of those bikes were stolen.

A town of Madison man and a Muscoda man were facing charges of possession of stolen property, but UWPD spokesperson Marc Lovicott told News 3 Wednesday afternoon that the DA’s office rejected the case, citing lack of evidence.

“Bottom line, our stance on this case hasn’t changed,” Lovicott said in an email. “We feel like this is a good case, involving good police work, and we stand by the facts of our investigation.”

Lovicott said the DA’s office didn’t believe they could prove without a reasonable doubt that the suspects knew the bikes found in their possession were stolen.

“The bikes were reported stolen in 2003, 2004, 2007, 2009 and 2013 – and the DA’s office says the bikes could have changed hands many times from the dates they were stolen to the date when we recovered them,” Lovicott said.

Lovicott said there is a hearing scheduled in the next few weeks to determine what UWPD will do with the bikes now that the case has been declined.