Bicycle Registration

The University of Houston Police Department recommends that every bicycle on campus be registered. It is a regular occurrence for our officers to catch a bicycle thief and confiscate a bicycle. Unless that bicycle is registered with the University of Houston Police Department or the owner reports it stolen we have no way to contact the owner and return the bicycle.

The sad fact is that not only does someone loose a bicycle in these instances, but the thief is usually let go with no charges. Under Texas law there is often nothing the University of Houston Police Department can do to charge the thief with a crime unless we can contact the owner.

When your bicycle is registered with the University of Houston Police Department we will have three ways to identify you as the owner of a bicycle. We will be able to identify you by the registration sticker, the bicycle's serial number or the optional engraved ID number.

If your unfortunate enough to get your bicycle stolen and we have the serial number on file we will enter that information into the National Crime Information Center database of stolen articles. This database is available to over 50,000 police departments national wide and is checked over 14,000,000 times a day for stolen property. When your bicycle is registered with UHPD not only are the officers of UHPD working to recover your bicycle, but thousands of officers across the county will be helping!

Registering Your Bicycle

Registering your bicycle is easy. Bring your bicycle to the Police Station located on Entrance 11 near the corner of Wheeler and Scott Streets. We collect your contact information, affix a registration sticker to the bicycle, record the serial number of the bicycle, and optionally engrave an identification number on the bicycle. This information is entered into our database for easy cross referencing.

Engraving your Bicycle

If you desire UHPD will engrave your bicycle with an identification number. This number is usually your Texas ID or driver's license number. This number is engraved into the frame of the bicycle and would be very difficult to remove.

An added advantage to the engraved number is we can use a prefix like TDL for Texas Driver's License or TXID for Texas Identification that all police officers will recognize. This will allow an officer to identify a bicycle as yours by cross checking against the state files even before you may have missed your bicycle.