Our pals at Seattle Bike Blog lay down the details of a new effort from SPD to reunite bike owners with lost and stolen bicycles:

The Seattle Police Department has launched a new Twitter feed to help connect owners with recovered bikes.

As with cars, some bike thefts are really just people taking a joyride. The thief rides the bike a little, then ditches it. Residents or workers call police to report an unknown bike in in their front yard or wherever, and the found bikes are taken into police custody. But then what?

Well, that depends in part on on you. No matter what, you should file a police report once you notice your bike is missing. For bikes under $500 in value, you can easily report the theft online. Over $500, call the non-emergency number at 206-625-5011 to report it to an officer.

If you have record of your bike’s serial number, your police report can help officers track a found or recovered bike back to you. So right now, go make sure you have your bike’s serial number recorded somewhere (I emailed the number and a photo to myself). This University of Texas guide shows you most the places the number could be located. If your bike was stolen and you did not record the serial number, you might be able to call the bike shop where you bought it and see if they can look it up in their computer.

However, if you have no record of the number, SPD has started tweeting descriptions of recovered bikes via the @GetYourBikeBack account. So check it out and see if your bike pops up there.

SBB has more details of other useful tools for bike-owner reunification here.

In summer 2011, SPD launched their ‘Get Your Car Back’ effort on Twitter.