Illegal dirt bikes and ATVs are turning Philadelphia streets into scenes from a Mad Max movie.
Thom Nickels
June 28, 2021 @ City Journal. Published with permission.
Five years ago while on assignment, I was riding with a
police officer in Philadelphia’s Kensington section when we saw a large
all-terrain vehicle (ATV) drive onto the sidewalk. A crowd watched as
the rider performed a series of wheelies and tricks. The carnival
atmosphere of the scene attracted an additional ATV rider intent on
outperforming the first performer. The officer stepped out of the squad
car and quietly told the drivers not to block the sidewalk. As the
officer left the scene, I saw both ATVs merge with traffic, presumably
to restart their wheelies and tricks.
The scene prompted more questions than answers: ATVs are illegal for
street use, so why did the officer chide them only for driving onto the
sidewalk? The officer told me that the Philadelphia Police Department
had instructed its officers to go easy on ATV and dirt-bike riders
because it was “a culturally sensitive issue.” The underlying message:
officers should not take direct action because that might be deemed
“racist.”
This incident occurred when the ATV/dirt-bike problem in Philadelphia
was just beginning to mount, and members of the “street-riding
community” were beginning to feel their strength in numbers. In those
early years, riders in the city generally stuck to back roads or
isolated bike paths along the Delaware River. The few renegade vehicles
that made their way onto congested city streets were regarded as
anomalous.
As the years passed, the numbers of riders slowly increased. After
all, these were easy-to-get recreational vehicles that can be purchased
online or at Walmart. You can order a TaoTao dirt bike, for instance,
online for $779.95 (free shipping); a kids' ATV goes for $1,555, while
the bigger Strokeshaft ATV goes for $2,939.95.
The pandemic and the June 2020 George Floyd riots seemed to quadruple
the number of riders in Philadelphia. The riots set a tone of
freewheeling anarchy. Riders traveled in larger and larger contingents
and became much bolder in their disruptions of local traffic flows in
neighborhoods and throughout Center City. Pedestrians had to contend
with the sudden appearance of invading bikers, 30 or more at a time,
blazing through crosswalks or taking sudden detours onto sidewalks.
In March 2021, a viral video captured a violent confrontation between
an armed ATV driver and a driver of an SUV on Broad Street in South
Philadelphia. A number of illegal vehicles driving in front of the SUV
driver had stopped suddenly, causing the driver to hit the back of a
bike. When the driver left his vehicle to see if the dirt-bike rider was
okay, an altercation occurred that ended with the driver sustaining
minor injuries. The 27-year-old dirt-bike rider was arrested and found
to have a long record of assaults.
Last month, a community meeting of the Queen Village Neighbors
Association drew more than 1,100 people to complain to city council
members and the Philadelphia Police Department about illegal racing
along pedestrian sidewalks, commercial corridors, and residential
streets. Residents of luxury high-rise condos complained of the noise
from dirt bikes rising from the street and imploding midair in a kind of
“Sensurround.”
Metro Philadelphia reported last fall that the Philadelphia
Police Department had deployed a detail dedicated to confiscating ATVs
and dirt bikes. “Since May, they have taken 263 off the streets;
however, the program can’t be utilized on a daily basis and may not be
able to continue indefinitely due to budget constraints,” Metro reported.
On June 10, as a result of citywide protests against these vehicles,
the city council unanimously passed a bill aimed at cracking down on
them. The bill altered the city code so that dirt-bike riders face the
same consequences as ATV riders: a $2,000 fine and police confiscation.
At-large councilmember Allan Domb, one of the bill’s sponsors, said,
“There is a safety issue here. We’ve seen people ride on the sidewalks.
The safety is not just for the residents, it’s also for the people
actually operating these vehicles.”
Two days after the bill’s passage, more than 1,000 bikers congregated
at 3800 Aramingo Avenue in a spectacle of noise, fireworks, drag
racing, and “civil disobedience.” During the event, biker Angel
Rodriquez, 21, was fatally shot by an anonymous rider who left the scene
and remains at large. The incident, happening as it did just days after
the city council’s crackdown, was further proof that the illegal bike
problem isn’t going away anytime soon. Skeptics now wonder if police
will continue to look the other way or find excuses not to fine or
confiscate the bikes of lawbreakers. What’s the use of a new law if it’s
not enforced?
As if to underscore the skeptics’ concerns, district attorney Larry
Krasner has called for a more nuanced understanding of how dirt bikes
and ATVs are used in Philadelphia. “It is very (important) for us not to
lump everyone together and for us not to stereotype,” Krasner said.
“There is a big difference between driving a vehicle down the street and
endangering people by driving up and down a sidewalk. There’s a
difference between traveling at a normal speed and going at an extremely
high speed, or going against traffic, or blowing through traffic
lights. We have to be willing to see those distinctions if we’re not
going to fall into some of our old traps.”
Local media outlets report that bikers say they are riding because
they are “trying to get out of neighborhoods riddled with violent
crime.” They said that police crackdowns won’t stop them. One rider told NBC10 News:
“I’ve been doing this for years. This is my stress reliever. I’m not
going to stop. I’m never going to stop.” Another rider said that if his
ATV were confiscated, he would just go out and buy another one.
The city council, in an attempt to appease the bikers, is considering
creating an ATV and dirt-bike park somewhere in the city. A park of
this sort would have to be built from scratch, and many questions
linger, like how bikers would transport their vehicles to and from the
location. “I think realistically that could take some time. We want to
find a location that’s not going to be in a residential or commercial
setting,” Domb said.
But for many riders, performing in a public environment for an
“unwilling” audience seems like the whole point. If that’s the case,
then any effort to contain riders in an enclosed, theme-park setting,
where they are expected to obey the rules of containment, is bound to
fail. As the rider said, street biking is a “stress reliever.”
Thom Nickels is a Philadelphia-based author and journalist.
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By Mychal Massie May 10, 2021
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