What's the point of this bike crackdown anyway?
Dozens more city cyclists had their day in court on Monday as part of the continuing wave of NYPD criminal summonses for basic moving violations — and many of them were quick to point out that Mayor Mamdani has said he would end a policy that is resulting in a lot of dismissed tickets and wasted time.
Criminal Court Judge John Walsh dismissed most of the roughly three-dozen summonses he heard on Monday, either due to insufficient details or errors in the NYPD-issued tickets or simply as a warning, also known as an "adjournment in contemplation of dismissal." Only a few cyclists were actually forced to pay a fine, albeit for pleading down their original criminal summonses to disorderly conduct, a violation.
Ironically, the hearings were taking place on the 16th floor of the Municipal Building in lower Manhattan just as Mamdani was holding an unrelated press conference. The mayor has been asked repeatedly by reporters why he is continuing a policy instituted by Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch even though he has insisted that cyclists "should not be facing a criminal summons."
Tisch began the crackdown on cyclists last spring on orders from her former boss, Eric Adams, and nevertheless, despite the new mayor, she persists.
Cyclists called on Mamdani to force Tisch, who works for him, to scrap the aggressive enforcement policy, which led to an array of bizarre and brutal arrests of cyclists and e-bike riders, and snarled thousands of New Yorkers in the criminal justice system for violations that were previously subject to a traffic ticket that they could conveniently pay online, just like car drivers.
“They don’t bring frigging cars to court," said a Brooklyn mom, who asked not to be named, but said she had received a summons for allegedly riding through a red light on her e-bike with her son shortly after Mamdani took office.
"Cars kill people left and right. I was an easy target. It’s a giant waste of everyone’s time," she added about the ticket that Walsh had dismissed.
Most of the cyclists and e-bikers who came to court on Monday had received summons for alleged red-light violations, and they were overwhelmingly young men of color who required an interpreter. This strongly suggests the crackdown is catching a large number of immigrant New Yorkers and delivery workers.
Another cyclist, whom the NYPD ticketed for allegedly riding through a red bike light in Midtown in mid-January on a Citi Bike e-bike, agreed that Mamdani should end the Adams-era policy.
"It doesn’t make sense," said Allison E. "I don't think it's a smart use of everyone's time."
It's eating up the mayor's time, too, as reporters, including those from Streetsblog, have repeatedly asked him about the policy he said he'd end. For now, he insists that he's in "conversations" with Tisch about the policy.
It's been a long conversation. It's unclear if Tisch, who also has not commented, shares the mayor's belief that it should not be "the police [who] should be the ones to deal with the failures of these app companies," who encourage workers to bike recklessly.
But she has not pulled back. On Jan. 14, the commanding officer of Manhattan's Seventh Precinct told a community council meeting that his cops are "still focusing on the e-bikes along Delancey Street [with] criminal summons to people driving their bikes recklessly."
The NYPD also staged a sting at the Manhattan entrance of the Williamsburg Bridge, where the mayor held a bike-related press conference less than a day prior. That same week, Streetsblog witnessed the NYPD ticketing cyclists as multiple drivers ran red lights at the very same location:
One attorney, who appeared in court on Monday to represent a cyclist who got a summons for going through a red light in January, called on Mamdani to follow through on his campaign rhetoric.
"Drivers are responsible for several orders of magnitude more injuries and death [than cyclists and e-bike riders]," said Peter Beadle, a Queens-based lawyer and bike advocate. "It’s not about safety, it’s about punishment."
The attorney said the mayor has to go beyond the evidence-free politics of his predecessor's campaign against vulnerable road users.
"There may be some political difficulty for the mayor to pick this particular fight, but that too highlights how wrong this is," Beadle added.
Judge Walsh declined to be interviewed, but his dismissal of most summonses reflected the pattern of the early days of Tisch's crackdown, with cyclists receiving less of a penalty than if NYPD had just issued them a regular ticket.
But unlike a traffic ticket, criminal court summons can lead to an arrest warrant if a defendant doesn't show up to the court date. Wealthier defendants often hire an attorney to go for them, Beadle said, but many miss a day of work or face a possible arrest.
"There’s a whole lot of people [who are] put in jeopardy [because they] can’t make these dates," Beadle said. "It’s very scary — you think you’re in a lot of trouble."
City Hall did not respond to our latest request for comment.
