By Andy B. Mayfair
Food delivery is at an all time high in popularity – which is why the New York City Council wants the city’s police department to give e-bike food deliveries some much-needed slack.
City Council member Donovan Richards is one of 15 politicians who believe police brass are making it too difficult — they use the phrase “extreme hardship” – for delivery people riding electric bikes to move food across the city to hungry New Yorkers.
“I appreciate NYPD and DOT’s efforts to address reckless and dangerous behavior on our streets, but the collision trends do not support the level of e-bike enforcement we are seeing in our neighborhoods,” Richards told The Post.
“Similar to marijuana enforcement and stop, question and frisk, the data does not support the focus on confiscating a vital tool to how many immigrants make a living in our city.”
A law in Albany that would provide some relief isn’t moving forward since it landed in Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s in box.
“The truth of the matter is that these delivery workers just want to go about their day without fear or retaliation,” state Assemblywoman Nily Rozic (D-Queens), the bill’s sponsor, told the Post. “If New York wants to continue being known for its workers’ rights, we need to include everything in that.”
The issue is not without its amusing aspects. A piece on streetsblog.org was headlined “NYPD Brass Hates E-Bikes … Until They’re Delivering Their Lunch!” It begins, “Did that burger come with a side of hypocrisy? The police war on e-bike delivery workers continues across the city’s precincts, but at 1 Police Plaza on the coldest day of the year, the architects of the battle plan and their staff received their steaming hot lunches, thanks to the very workers they’ve been ordering cops to bust.”
Several delivery people claimed they had “received tickets of $500 and had their bikes confiscated in other precincts. A single $500 ticket nullifies roughly 10 days of work for a delivery rider,” the site reported. “Ironically (or not), one worker told Streetsblog that he never gets busted near 1 Police Plaza.”
The New York Daily News also spoke up, chiding Cuomo in a story with the headline, “Hey, Gov, let us ride our e-bikes: Immigrant delivery workers look to Cuomo to end city’s discriminatory crackdown.”
“While we’ve waited for the governor to sign the legislation, the NYPD has continued to confiscate e-bikes and, according to data from the Office of Administrative Trials and Hearings, has issued 342 more summonses at $500 apiece through late November,” the Daily News piece reads. “For these immigrant workers, $500 often represents a week’s worth of pay. When delivery workers get these staggering fines, we often ask ourselves bitterly, “Why did I bother to work this week?”
