By Bill Parry
Police Commissioner William Bratton stood atop a platform waiving a checkered flag calling forth a pair of bulldozers that crushed nearly 80 illegal motorcycles, dirt bikes and all-terrain vehicles in a demonstration that lasted less than two minutes. The event in Red Hook, Brooklyn, which was streamed live on Facebook, had been promised by the commissioner several weeks ago to let riders know “bike wilding” on city streets will no longer be tolerated.
“We want to send out a very strong message to the nitwits and knuckleheads who insist on operating these illegal vehicles on the streets, sidewalks, parks and housing developments of the city of New York,” Bratton said. ““They are illegal, they cannot be registered to be used anywhere in the city of New York and thus they are now in the junk heap.”
Chief of Patrol Carlos Gomez said 679 of the vehicles have been confiscated off the streets as part of an NYPD offensive. A total of 64 have been seized on the streets of Queens so far this year, according to the NYPD.
“We will crush them, we have crushed them, and we will continue to crush them as we gather more of them,” Bratton said. “They’re just a plague on the city and you see a tremendous amount of calls about these things.”
Bratton warned weeks ago that operations would intensify each weekend as warmer weather approached, bringing more packs of riders on to the streets. An episode of biker-wilding took place in August when officers from the 107th Precinct in Flushing discovered a large group of dirt bike and ATV riders driving recklessly in the north and southbound lanes of the Van Wyck Expressway.
One rider aboard an ATV sped along Park Drive East right into oncoming traffic. Two people were arrested and two ATVs and a dirt bike were seized in that incident.
The NYPD’s new efforts are part of Mayor Bill de Blasio’s Vision Zero accident reduction campaign. Bratton said the operation is showing results with seizures up 96 percent compared with this time last year.
“Last year we had five deaths related to ATV’s, minibikes and these off-the-road type vehicles,” he said. “This year we’ve had zero.”
Bratton said the NYPD would carry out operations every weekend in an effort to “get these characters” and asked the public to report such packs of riders by calling 311 or 911.
“Nothing is more dangerous than the manner in which some of these individuals choose to operate their motorcycles, ATVs and dirt bikes,” Deputy Commissioner Robert Martinez said. “It projects a sense of recklessness, a sense of lawlessness in our city.”
Martinez said the crushed vehicles would be sold as scrap metal at 2 cents a pound.
“I hope we make a few bucks with it,” Bratton said. “You’re not going to get rich.”
Reach reporter Bill Parry by e-mail at bparr
