Officers Stopping Cyclists in Central Park

Project "Look" may include new programmatic law enforcement effortstargeting bicyclists. Each morning this week we were confronted by aParks & Rec. Department law enforcement personnel operatingcheckpoints at different locations on the Central Park Loop.

Today's checkpoint was different than the previous two. There weretwo serial checkpoints, with the officers at the first one (locatedmidway up a downhill stretch) gathering information on the bicyclistspassing them and radioing it down to a more formal checkpoint at thefoot of the hill.

We were actually waved through a red light by the officers up thehill, I think because they saw that we were going to stop in time forthe red light and thus yield no useful information for the officer atthe foot of the hill.

The officer at the foot of the hill didn't seem to be giving outtickets, only warnings. However, we saw him grabbing and detainingbicyclists who attempted to evade him by riding in the traffic laneoutside the cones, and giving them extra-long warnings. One of thesecounseling sessions was actually pretty intense, with the bicyclistattempting to wrench his arm free.