More than £25,000 worth of bicycles have been stolen from Braintree town centre in just nine months - and police today claimed most of them were easy pickings for thieves.

Statistics analysed by researchers have revealed that so far during 1998, 115 pedal cycles have been taken from the town, worth £26,000.

In a bid to stem the spate of thefts officers have pledged to keep a close eye on possible points of resale and have again appealed to cycle owners to look after their property.

Steve Turner, of Braintree police, said: "The single most astonishing fact is that in the majority of cases, these bikes are not secured in any way.

"The numbers of cycles going missing suggests that some people in the area are making a living out of stealing and reselling these bikes. They are going into back gardens and into sheds specifically to steal them.

"The majority are never recovered. These bikes are valuable pieces of property but without postcoding or serial numbers it's very difficult to individually identify them so

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