It's a tyranny of the cranks.
The supposedly "data-driven" NYPD admitted for the first time on Tuesday that its new criminal summons crackdown against cyclists is not a response to hard data, but by complaints at community meetings — a revelation that came as city lawmakers stepped up their rhetoric against the escalated enforcement policy.
In the lead up to the new policy last month, NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch had said her agency had "done a good, hard look at the data — where we're seeing the most complaints, where we're seeing the most collisions, where we're seeing the most injuries."
But on Tuesday, as part of a lengthy answer to another question from Streetsblog, a police spokesperson said the new strategy actually arose from an "outpouring" of people complaining about e-bikes at community meetings, and not from hard data.
"Complaints about this type of behavior do not typically come in from 311 and 911, since those calls are usually for issues that can be remediated in the moment," said the police spokesperson, who declined to provide a name. "[But] New Yorkers are clearly and increasingly raising these fears and concerns in venues like Community Council meetings, Community Town Halls, and other events where we work to better understand how we can best serve the public."
Such community meetings do not represent a cross-section of public opinion, as people caring for children or the elderly, those who have to hold down second jobs, or people who are undocumented are dramatically under-represented.
The NYPD's policy, announced on April 28, turns traffic tickets for offenses – like breaking red lights or not stopping at stop signs – into criminal court summonses. It was rolled out as part of a new division targeting so-called quality-of-life offenses, which Tisch has said will be "very much driven by 311."
The cops have been targeting cyclists during the morning and evening rush along 14 corridors in four boroughs, exempting Staten Island.
"The enforcement areas chosen are high traffic volume corridors where there are risks of collision for both pedestrians and e-bike drivers," the police press rep said.
The blitz is focused on electric bikes, the spokesperson said, with 90 percent of its C summonses going to those riders so far. But Streetsblog has documented extensively how non-e-bike riders, including those not breaking any laws, have gotten caught in the dragnet.
The NYPD did not provide any further data about its roughly two-week-old crackdown.
Mixed data
The statistical threat of e-bikes pales in comparison to the traffic violence drivers wreak on New Yorkers, with the former accounting for 1.2 percent of all traffic injuries and 2.7 percent of all fatalities last year, according to the NYPD.
Complaints to 311 for quality-of-life issues with bikes, which the city labels "Bike/Roller/Skate Chronic," have been on the rise over the last five years, but actually decreased in 2024, according to a Streetsblog analysis of Open Data.
Location-based data for complaints so far this year show that the complaints are spread out around the city, including in areas where the NYPD is not ramping up enforcement, like Staten Island.
Political backlash
The broader deployment has raised concerns among immigrant advocates, who say moving the violations to criminal court could deliver many non-citizens who work as delivery workers into the hands of immigrant enforcement agents.
Lawmakers echoed those worries, with Manhattan Council Member Gale Brewer denouncing the policy on social media on Monday.
The new enforcement sweeps caught Brewer by surprise and she said that lawmakers were working on legislation targeting app companies.
"We need to do something on the local level. I was surprised," Brewer told Streetsblog at a press conference about e-bike battery charging stations. "We want education, we want ticketing, we’re also working on the apps. We’re working on legislation because they’re the ones that say, ‘rush, rush, rush, rush, rush.’"
A spokesperson for Council Speaker Adrienne Adams agreed that the criminal summonses were "misguided," and said the legislators are still discussing responses.
"Issuing criminal summonses to bike riders for minor traffic violations is a misguided approach that will not make our city safer," said Mara Davis in a statement. "Discussions in the Council remain ongoing about responses to this recent policy change."
Rep. Dan Goldman (D-Manhattan/Brooklyn) said that there should be civil enforcement first, before resorting to criminal levels.
"I think that it makes sense to start on the civil level with a fine. If those fines are not paid or the same repeat offenders are persistently violating the laws, I could see a reason to escalate it," the federal lawmaker said at the same press event. "Given the fear and terror that ICE and the Department of Homeland Security are intentionally placing within immigrant communities, I think we need to be careful about criminal charges."
When asked about that concern, the NYPD rep reiterated that the police do not cooperate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement on "civil immigration matters," adding that ICE is not allowed make civil arrests of people on state court property. Agents are also not legally permitted to make civil arrests of people going to or coming from court unless they have a warrant signed by a judge, according to the state's Office of Court Administration.
However, the police department has recently shared a sealed arrest record of a pro-Palestinian protester with ICE, who then detained that person.
And the fact that federal agents have repeatedly defied court orders and deported people who have not been criminally charged makes immigration advocates nervous. One lawyer working with people who have received the criminal bike summonses did not trust ICE to start following New York State laws.
"Rules about the OCA do not apply to an organization that views itself as not subject to due process," said Chris Greene, an attorney at Vaccaro Law. "Taking the NYPD’s justification at face value requires us to ignore everything that’s happening in the world right now."
Streetsblog has been covering NYPD Commissioner Tisch's decision to turn traditional traffic tickets into criminal summonses like no one else in town. Here's a full list of our coverage over the past two weeks, in case you have missed something or need a reminder that when there's a big story on the livable streets beat, turn to Streetsblog:
- May 2: "Policy Change: NYPD Will Write Criminal Summonses, Not Traffic Tickets, for Cyclists."
- May 5: "NYPD’s Red Light Criminalization Marks ‘Obscene’ Escalation: Advocates."
- May 6: "As NYPD’s Criminal Crackdown on Cyclists Expands, It Grows More Absurd: Victims."
- May 7: "Komanoff: Tsk, Tsk, Tisch — Criminal Summonses for Cyclists Will Backfire."
- May 9: "NYPD’s Push To Criminalize Cycling Spells Trouble For Immigrant Workers."
- May 12: "Cyclist Launches Class Action Suit For Bogus NYPD Red Light Tickets."
