THE SHIFT: Mamdani Calls In DSNY — Not NYPD — After Anti-Muslim Delivery Worker Hysteria From The NY Post

Mayor Mamdani ditched his predecessor’s practice of siccing NYPD on delivery workers who hang out on E. 11th Street in response to stories in the New York Post — opting to send the Department of Sanitation to clean up the block instead after the tabloid claimed mosque-going e-bike workers had “overwhelmed” the area and turned it into a “junkyard.”

After several stings prompted by the Murdoch-owned Post, where cops confiscated delivery bikes and ticketed workers, the Mamdani administration took a new approach on Thursday after the tabloid reported over the weekend that deliverymen “who congregate outside a half-century-old East Village mosque have transformed the area into a noisy, violent, trash-strewn junkyard while driving businesses and residents out.”

On Thursday morning, sanitation workers collected debris between parked e-bikes. NYPD community affairs officers were also on the scene, but not to seize bikes — a change from two previous tabloid-inspired “raids” under ex-Mayor Eric Adams. The NYPD confirmed that it was not the lead agency on this operation.

“Sanitation is scheduled to respond and clean the area,” the NYPD said in a statement. “There are no plans to seize bikes.”

NYPD first swept the block last July, after The Post first reported “migrant workers” had “taken over” the block, according to Tyler Hefferon, the executive director of EV Loves NYC, a food bank that serves asylum seekers and others and conducts workforce training in the area. The Post ran two more stories about the block on July 25 and Aug. 21. On Aug. 28, officers swept the area again, seizing over two dozen bikes. NYPD did not respond to questions from Streetsblog about the legal justification for the confiscations.

Amid Islamophobic hysteria around Mayor Mamdani, The Post’s latest coverage emphasized the role of the mosque in the burgeoning public space — even though not all delivery workers in the area are Muslim and the mosque isn’t open most of the time.

“We’ve been in touch with the precinct a lot, they’re very sympathetic to the delivery drivers and they try to give us as much notice as possible [for sweeps],” said Hefferon. “What happens is, when these New York Post articles go up about that particular corner it just kind of goes up the chain of command and then all of a sudden they’re getting orders from One Police Plaza to do a sweep and take a bunch of people’s bikes.”

Mamdani didn’t take the same bait. On Wednesday, the city posted signs that warned workers to remove their bikes and mopeds “due to a schedule [sic] cleanup taking place on 3/26/2026 between 9 a.m.-10:30 a.m.”

The next day, sanitation workers showed up with brooms right on schedule — a dramatic shift from NYPD’s previous punitive crackdowns.

“It’s becoming less and less dramatic,” Hefferon said as he watched Thursday’s clean-up.

Hundreds of delivery workers congregate on E. 11th Street and around the corner onto First Avenue to pray, eat and rest in between shifts. The Madina Masjid Islamic Council of America, one of the oldest in the city, opened in the 1970s; a few others businesses cater to the African Muslim community as well. Last year, DOT installed bike racks on the block, which the workers use as long-term storage for their two-wheeled work vehicles.

Yet The Post repeatedly attacks the workers for the simple act of congregating in public. Abdul Motaleb, the Madina Masjid mosque’s vice president, said the paper’s coverage blames the state of the block on his congregation. Motaleb wants to see workers do better at cleaning up after themselves and thinks everyone needs to work together to find a solution — including companies who do not provide their workers with space to rest.

“I am upset, my concern is that New York Post puts everything on our shoulders,” Abdul Motaleb told Streetsblog. “This job is not ours, it’s a city job, we should work together and help each other. They need somewhere they can put their bikes.”

One worker, Amadou from Guinea, said he lives in the Bronx and parks his bike in front of the mosque because it’s safer than schlepping it home after DoorDash shifts in the area.

Watching DSNY help to clean the area was “really nice,” Amadou said.

“If I had a better job, I would take it,” he added. “I live in the Bronx, I never park in the Bronx because I work here and it’s safer.”

Neighborhood organizers who spoke to Streetsblog called on app companies to do more — and urged the city to make that happen.

“The app companies are making a lot of money on this, but they have no responsibility,” said Manhattan Community Board 3 District Manager Susan Stetzer. “They’re not directly hiring the men, which allows them to not be directly responsible for providing space for storage, for the men to have a place to eat and use the bathroom.”

A construction worker based on the block echoed locals’ frustration with the build-up of trash and the bikes parked on the sidewalk, but agreed that apps need to take more responsibility.

“That is what the company is supposed to do,” said Giuseppe Disegaro, who works for the Giurdanella Bros., a construction and tile contractor. “We don’t mind when they put the bikes [there], but the workers have to clean the area.”

Bananas, a restaurant at the corner of E. 11th Street and First Avenue, has welcomed the bike parking outside its storefront. The business posted on Instagram that anyone who could prove they biked to the area would get 5 percent off a meal. Co-owner Chris Ng said none of his customers have ever complained about the workers’ presence nearby.

“I don’t think it negatively affects our business for them to gather and park their bikes. They need a place to put their bikes,” Ng said. “The only thing that has been negative is if street cleaning can’t happen. But other than that I don’t have anything negative to say about them. There’s something different on every block, we are all living in the city together.” 

The area has functioned as a hub for African Muslims for decades. Long before the app-delivery boom, New Yorkers would complain about cab drivers parking on the street to attend the mosque on Fridays, Stetzer said.

App companies are not required to provide break areas for their workers, who are all private contractors. Delivery workers often work long days and lack a secure spot to return to for a break or when they need to charge their phones and e-bike batteries. This arrangement has bred tensions in areas like the East Village that have a lot of restaurants and deliveries.

“The city doesn’t have enough infrastructure for the bikes,” Hefferon said. “At the end of the day, it shouldn’t be the city’s responsibility for this private fleet of delivery workers, it should really be the delivery apps that are stepping up to figure out a solution as opposed to these 1099 [gig worker] guys getting hit with all these tickets and confiscations and things like that.”

Streetsblog reached out for comment from the largest app companies operating in the city: UberEats, Grubhub/Seamless, DoorDash and Instacart. Uber Communications Director Josh Gold told Streetsblog the company will reach out to Manhattan CB3 and the mosque as well as private bike rental and battery-swap businesses to work on a solution.

Grubhub, which owns Seamless, has a delivery worker “concierge hub” program with e-bike rental company JOCO. There are currently three Grubhub/Seamless concierge hubs in the city where workers can relax and recharge between deliveries, but the hubs do not offer long-term storage for private bikes. DoorDash and Instacart did not respond to requests for comment.

Mayor Mamdani’s preliminary budget allocates $25 million to build more secure bike parking in the city. DOT recently selected California-based Tranzito to build an initial 500 secure structures. The initiative’s larger hubs may include a way to charge e-bikes, the city said.

Other attempts to provide delivery workers rest hubs have floundered: The city broke ground last year on a small hub at the site of an old newsstand in front of City Hall, but it has yet to open — and is not nearly enough for the city’s 80,000-person delivery workforce.

Meanwhile, virtually all of the city’s initiatives to create public e-bike charging stations have stalled. Private companies like PopWheels have filled in the gaps by opening subscription-only battery-swap stations at private locations around the city, but the local regulation landscape has made it difficult to build outdoor public charging infrastructure.

“East 11th Street is a garbage-strewn mess, but New Yorkers should not blame the delivery riders. These hard working men, many of whom are my battery-swapping clients, work 12-to 16-hour days just trying to feed their families in Africa,” said PopWheels co-founder Baruch Hertzfeld. “In order to fix the macro problem of delivery riders being forced to use public space for their personal and bike storage needs, Mamdani needs to ramp up the pressure on these mega delivery apps by threatening their licenses to operate as third party delivery apps in New York City.”

City Hall did not immediately comment.