Dirt Bikers Derailed

A sincere thank you to Representative Dillon and Governor Malloy. I hope that the legislator and current/future mayor work with Chief Esserman to enforce the penalties included in the law.

I'd love to see tougher anti-loitering and panhandling legislation enacted as well. That is a similar blight on our downtown and business communities.

Dear NHPD:

Please come to my neighborhood, and sit at the corner of Hyde and Fort Hale. You will easily be able to apprehend 3-4 dirt bikers. Since you don't seem to respond to my calls to 911 and 946-6316, I thought I would contact you here.

Thank you in advance,
Morris Cove Mom

The bill is only part of the solution. The City needs to enforce restrictions aggressively; note running around with cameras every 6 weeks is not aggressive.

Most people consider the dirt bikes to be a nuisance, and they are. But it's much more than that. It's a liability in the making. It's only a matter of time before one of these biker's acrobatic wheelie moves goes awry and a bike lands on a crowded street full of kids or in a cars windshield. When that happens, and eventually it will, the City will face a huge lawsuit for failing to aggressively eliminate the hazards from the streets.

Morris Cove Mom- we live in the same police district and I have to say calling the police here has been a joke. You could tell them the biker had a gun tucked in his pants or was selling dope on the corner and they would all still be over in the RT 80/Quinnipiac area dealing with the high crime over there.

I'd say the ball is in the police's court now. There was a lot of talk about how the cops hands were tied and they needed new laws to get these guys, well guys the laws are here, time to step up.

Great! The law that a small group of concerned New Haven citizens from neighborhoods across the city along with soon-to-be mayoral candidate Justin Elicker helped give legs to, has finally passed after months of activism.

Now it's time for enforcement; NHPD you have my support!

I'm thrilled with the combination of the law's passage and the NHPD's recent surveillance & arrest project. I live in central Fair Haven and this past weekend was the most dirt bike free that I've seen in ages! There were a couple that sped by on Saturday, but it was nothing in comparison to the pre-crackdown nightmare that we've been enduring.

However I'm concerned that there's nothing in place to 1) allow this crackdown to continue and 2) to keep dirt bikes locked up once they've been confiscated. With the previous crackdown, only a few of those dirt bike seizures were "in-rem," meaning that the owners were not likely to be allowed to retrive them. What about the rest of the bikes? If the owners pay up, will they be allowed to get their bikes back? The NHPD had previously said that they had no room to store dirt bikes, so has this space issue been resolved now? Otherwise it seems like we still don't have all the tools necessary to seize AND keep dirt bikes, while arresting and prosecuting the operators.