They always do. I was locking up to a parking meter a few feet from a lamppost on Ninth Avenue when this fellow urgently motioned me to move on. Thinking that he considered this meter to be his private hitching post, I was irked. Nobody has pole exclusivity in this town. He plugs in a heavy-duty saw or drill and makes quick work of the lock.
Predators also roam in vans.
Spotting a locked bike, they jump out with a portable chain saw. And not only bikes get swallowed. During one of last winter's snowstorms, as reported in the Post , a school custodian yielded his snowblower at gunpoint to thieves who'd jumped out of a passing van. If I can hold on to a bike for a year, that's good enough. But sometimes I'm cursed by clumps of theft, as when three bikes vanished in less than a year.