NYPD is still hitting bicyclists with criminal summons — and Mayor Mamdani, who once opposed the policy, still won't even talk about it.
The 16-day mayor, who previously had criticized his predecessor's policy, has declined repeatedly to give a straight answer about the policy — which Streetsblog has confirmed is ongoing despite Mamdani's promise to lead a bike-friendly administration.
Reporters have unsuccessfully asked Mamdani several times in the past two weeks to clarify his police department's policy. When pressed for a least the fourth time on Friday, Mamdani again declined to answer "yes" or "no," instead promising to "follow up" on the matter.
“This is one of the focuses of the work that we are doing, is living up to the commitment that I’ve made where a cyclist should not be facing a criminal summons, they should be facing a civil summons,” Mamdani told Newsday's Matthew Chayes at an unrelated stop in Jackson Heights. “And here, on Day 16, it’s one of the things I’m going to follow up on.”
Asked again for a yes-or-no answer on whether cops are still issuing criminal summonses to cyclists for transgressions for which drivers receive a regular traffic ticket, returnable by mail, he replied, “I can follow up with you.”
Mamdani's chronic and inexplicable reticence to clarify the policy under his watch is particularly alarming because it came just two day after the commanding officer of the Seventh Precinct in Manhattan told the public that his officers continued to issue criminal summons to cyclists on the notoriously congested Delancey Street — where Streetsblog indeed recently spotted a sting.
"We’re still focusing on the e-bikes along Delancey Street," Captain Jayson Evert told the attendees of a Jan. 14 community council meeting for his Lower East Side command. "We’re issuing c-summons [criminal summons] to people driving their bikes recklessly."
Evert's admission sharply contrasts with Mamdani's evasions.
On Jan. 5 — just four days after Mamdani took his oath of office — the aforementioned Chayes asked the new mayor whether NYPD continued to criminally charge cyclists. Mamdani responded that he had "been clear that I don't think it should be a criminal summons and I'll get back to you if any of that is still in effect."
On Jan. 6, Streetsblog reporter Kevin Duggan asked Mamdani again — and, again, Mamdani evaded the question:
These are part of the conversations that we’re having. In addition to the question of what kind of a summons, we also have to make it easier to be a cyclist in compliance with the law, because I will tell you that you will find a cyclist biking on a pavement, and sometimes when you ask them why they’re doing so, they’ll point to the car that’s driving in the bike lane.
And on Jan. 12, Duggan asked Mamdani the same question at a press conference in Red Hook. The mayor parried once again: "Something that I’ve made clear is that I think that cyclists should not be subject to criminal summonses, and that’s a conversation that we’re having."
Former Mayor Eric Adams and Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch, who remains in her post, instructed cops to target cyclists with criminal summons in spring 2025. The policy became a pivotal issue in mayoral race, during which candidate Mamdani trained his fire on delivery platforms for encouraging reckless behavior by overloading their contractors with work.
"I do not believe the police should be the ones to deal with the failures of these app companies," he told the moderators during the second mayoral debate. Two weeks after Mamdani won the mayoralty, he agreed to keep Tisch as his police commissioner.
She has not responded to several text messages from Streetsblog.
— with Kevin Duggan
