The Bermuda Police Service and Bermuda?s insurance companies have announced their support for mandatory electronic tagging of all new bikes to prevent cycle theft.

The equipment, which will be made mandatory from September 1, will cost $150 and added on automatically to the price of any new cycle.

The spokeswoman for Bermuda?s insurance companies, Jennifer Murdoch said: ?Effective September 1, Datatag will be required for new bike owners seeking comprehensive motorcycle insurance with theft coverage.?

Eugene Bothelo, president of Datatag Bermuda, said there are currently 500,000 motorcycles in the UK protected by Datatag.

?The theft rate on these tagged machines is less than ten percent of the rate before it was introduced,? Mr. Bothello said.

However, when asked whether insurance companies were facilitating a monopoly on bike security services on the Island, Ms Murdoch said they had ?not been approached by any other product?, adding that Datatag was ?tried and tested?.

?At Argus, BF&M and Colonial we collectively process approximately 450 claims for stolen motorcycles each year, costing more than $750,000,? Ms Murdoch said. ?For policy holders these costs mean higher premiums.?

She said the cost of buying the kit should mean lower insurance premiums in the long term.

However, although bike dealers are selling the tagging kits to consumers at $150, Mr. Bothelo would not say how much he was selling the kits to the dealers.

Police Commissioner Johnathan Smith confirmed Police were being supplied with the electronic tag sensors from Datatag for free.

The tags pick up the electronic fingerprints, in the form of unique numbers, emitted from the tiny microchips hidden on every part of the motorcycle.

Commissioner Smith said bike theft was an expensive business as $12 million worth of cycles had been stolen since 2002.

?In 2002, 57.3 out of every 1,000 registered cycles were reported stolen,? he said. ?This was reduced to 43.6 cycles out of every 1,000 registered cycles in 2003 and to 33.9 per 1,000 in 2004.?

But even though the number of cycles being stolen since 2002 has dropped, Bermuda?s top Policeman said Datatag provided a ?quick and easy way for Police Officers to check whether a motorcycle or some of its parts were stolen?.

?It has been estimated that up to 20 percent of all cycles are equipped with at least one stolen part,? he said. ?We will vigorously deploy Datatag technology to detect stolen motorcycles and motorcycle parts and we will use that technology to assist with investigations and any subsequent prosecution.?

Datatag UK Managing Director Kevin Howells said out of 200 cases put forward by the UK?s Crown Prosecution Service for Datatag protected bikes, they have never lost a case.

?Our studies show people with this technology are five times less likely to have their bike stolen,? Mr. Howells said. ?A professional bike thief looks at a motorcycle as a three-dimensional parts catalogue.?

The kits will be distributed to every major bike dealer in Bermuda. Each dealer has someone trained to apply the five different types of electronic tag, he said.

?A unique number is lasered into the computer chips. You can put them anywhere in the bike, in the frame, in the seat or in the panels,? he said. ?A bike thief will have to destroy the bike to remove the transponder.?

The system also uses ?data-dots? smaller than one millimetre wide. A thousand of the data-dots will be plastered over every new bike.

?You stick it on and it dries clear,? he said. ?How can a thief be confident he has removed them all??

The DAT100 transponder is rice-grain sized microchips in-cased in a protective glass shell.

Their warning decals are stickers designed to warn off thieves and cannot be removed because it breaks like an egg-shell.