In the old west, a special kind of derision was reserved for horse thieves. A horse was not just another possession, and not even just another animal — to steal a man’s cattle was to steal some small part of his livelihood; to steal his horse was to take away his means of transportation, the engine that drove his work, his very freedom. A woman might have developeded a relationship with her horse, as it became tame and learned to respond to her commands just so. Horses were not interchangeable and easily replaceable, and to be without a horse was to be left with virtually nothing.

Horse thieves were among the very lowest, mangiest, least-­tolerated kinds of criminals. When they were caught, they were hanged.

Not to draw a parallel between a hunk of metal and a living animal, but we hold a similar disregard for bike thieves. Those who ride bikes to navigate the city are performing all kinds of social goods — they pollute less than motorists or transit users, they ease gridlock, they pose no real threat to anyone else on the road and, in a way, they even ease the price of gas by lowering the total pool of demand. It isn’t that all of them have chosen to be martyrs for the greater good — cyclists are also, very often, among the least affluent members of society, unable to afford to drive a car or hold a Metropass. Cyclists develop relationships with their bikes, tune them up and learn their quirks and — as we were reminded at the Toronto Cyclists Union’s recent screening of the epic film Pee-wee’s Big Adventure — become quite attached to them.

Theft of any kind is pretty despicable, but to take from those who often have so little, those who in their daily commuting or errand-running inflict so little burden on the rest of us — there must be a special circle of hell reserved for such scum.

Well, if there is, there’s a place of dishonour in it reserved for Igor Kenk. Among the cycling community, he’s long been notorious for rumours that he buys and sells stolen bikes out of his Queen West shop. Now we all know just how well deserved that notoriety likely was, after he was arrested by Toronto police this week and charged with theft. In his shop, and in several storage locations around the city, it appears he may have had more than 2,000 stolen bikes in his possession. The charges he faces indicate that his operation was a driving force behind Toronto’s reputation as the bike-theft capital of North America.

For years, we’ve wondered why the police could not seem to do anything to catch or deter bike thieves — why couldn’t they put decoy bikes on the street with GPS units in them, we wondered, or carry out surveillance on locations where theft was common or better investigate shops that had developed reputations for being stolen-goods warehouses. As much as we detested bike theft, we got used to the idea that the dollar amounts involved were too small to warrant a serious law-enforcement effort.

The sting operation that shut down Kenk’s operation proved that to be false. We’re happy that the police have cracked such a big theft ring. We’re happy that many dozens of people will be reunited with their long-lost bikes. And we’re ecstatic that a low-down, mangy, dirty (alleged) bike thief is out of commission. We don’t hang thieves any more (and thank goodness for that) but a good long jail sentence might demonstrate to the criminals just how it feels to be robbed of your freedom to travel.