Enforcing Laws is RACIST because BLACKS ARE CRIMINALS - Makes sense.... NYPD's Illegal Dirt Bike Enforcement Is Racist Against Blacks & Browns Says Community Activist!
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Sunday, May 29, 2016
New York City - "Motorized wilding.” That’s what NYPD Chief of Patrol Carlos Gomez recently called the actions of young dirt bike riders who “take over the streets, endanger the public and project a sense of lawlessness.”
Gomez and Commissioner Bill Bratton made their point this month with a spectacular photo op in Brooklyn featuring about 70 seized motorbikes being crushed under a bulldozer, to be later sold for scrap. Those bikes, and ATVs, are generally illegal on the street, and their riders are often unlicensed.
But the illegality doesn’t justify a public relations stunt using subtle, racialized messaging. Recall: The term “wilding” carries with it painful racial history for the city, rooted in the 1989 case of the Central Park Five, in which police and prosecutors essentially railroaded five young men of color with coerced rape confessions.
A “wolf pack” of young black and Latino men had been “wilding” in the park, claimed the media — contributing to a sense of fear and panic that required sure and swift convictions of the five.
A desire to renew that law-and-order character was on display at Bratton’s press conference: Today’s “wilding” teenagers need iron bulldozers of justice to set them straight.
Street riders zip up and down my neighborhood of Spanish Harlem. Most of my neighbors are barely moved from their daily routine. In fact, for some, riders seems to be part of the character of a neighborhood still thumbing its nose at a gentrifying city. Like loud cars and summertime grilling that isn’t sanctioned by the city, the norms of this community can differ than those of the nearby, well-to-do Upper East Side.
Stigmas against motorbikes feed the hysteria. A few years ago, a widely seen video that showed motorcycle riders getting into a violent altercation with a family in an SUV was the talk of the town. (Among the riders, ironically, was an off-duty cop.)
But younger dirt bike riders draw the most ire of police. In March, video taken by an ATV rider showed a Bronx cop chasing and pointing a gun at him. Last year, video emerged contradicting the police version of a fatal 2012 accident in which a police cruiser hit a dirt-bike rider from behind, killing one man and leaving another with brain damage. That same year another man was killed and the city had to pay $250,000 to another in a case where police similarly chased and hit a dirt bike.
All this despite statements from Bratton and other NYPD officials that there is a “no-chase” policy with riders.
In my neighborhood this year, I’ve seen an increase of police checkpoints set up to pull over motorcycles. Police have even confiscated small-engine scooters belonging to delivery men.
Is going after motorcycle riders, who rarely endanger anyone, worth the trouble? It’s especially worth asking the question because of the stark contrast between this crackdown and the coddling of another two-wheeled vehicle: the bicycle.
Today in New York City, the safety of bicycle riders is paramount. After former Mayor Michael Bloomberg paved the way for a political prioritization of bicyclists, Mayor de Blasio launched the Vision Zero campaign, named after its stated goal of lowering traffic-related deaths to nil.
Over the years, countless traffic lanes and parking spots have disappeared to make way for miles of bike lanes. Thousands of bikes even bearing the logo of Citi Bank dominate the city now.
A leader of Transportation Alternatives recently took to these pages to beg Bratton and the NYPD to write more summonses and enforce more severe punishment for drivers. While avoiding harm and death isn’t a new idea — or a bad one — I can’t help but see a glaring cultural disconnect.
Groups of black and Latino dirt bike riders, the vast majority of whom harm no one, are demonized as “wilding” criminals, while an organized bike lobby is having the city redesigned while it harangues a controversial police department to police even more aggressively.
Trujillo is a writer and activist.
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