The stolen Ducati, the politician’s quad bike and the Perth dad who became a community hero

Fed up with inaction after his motorcycle was stolen from his property in the east Perth suburb of Stratton last week, a Perth father decided to do his own investigative work.

Three days, dozens of community tips, and several social media pressure tactics later, Saadiq Regal not only recovered his own bike – he accidentally solved a theft involving a member of parliament and brought the region’s bike theft crime wave straight to government leaders.

His suburb’s local social media page has even been rebranded in his honour with the tag line, “I don’t just fight crime, I take back what’s yours”.

The 33-year-old part-time forklift driver and food truck owner kept the community hooked with regular updates about tracking down his stolen Ducati after he enlisted their help with tip-offs and information.

“I posted the CCTV footage of it being stolen and started getting messages and comments from everybody in Stratton saying, ‘They’ve stolen this from me, it’s the same kids that have done this, they’ve stolen this’,” Regal said.

“I was like, all right, this can’t happen. This is ridiculous. I didn’t care about my bike too much. This was all about them now.”

When he heard a quad bike had been stolen from the area on the same day as his bike, Regal deduced that it must have been pinched by the same alleged perpetrators, and spurred him further into action.

Little did he know, the bike belonged to local One Nation MP Rod Caddies and his wife. They had already filmed the alleged thieves hooning around the neighbourhood on it.

“This whole time I’m still getting information, tips, leads of who they are, their names, their addresses. I was pretty much building a whole story and feeding it back to the police.”

Regal was also building a map of where his bike had been taken as he was being fed back CCTV vision from the community of the bike being pushed down the street from his house and hidden elsewhere.

He decided to take the week off work and dedicated his time to driving around the neighbourhood on the lookout.

Regal said he only ever wanted the items returned, an apology and an admission of wrongdoing.

“I assumed that the kids got overwhelmed with what I was doing because they could clearly see me tracking them wherever they were taking this bike,” he said.

Caddies told this masthead he was grateful to get his quad bike back and said the experience prompted him to bring the issue to WA parliament.