NEW YORK (PIX11) — A woman says a pack of drivers on dirt bikes and ATVs surrounded her and her family as they drove down the Henry Hudson Parkway.
Dashboard camera video captures the Manhattan family’s moment of panic on Sunday. Jessica Garcia was behind the wheel with her husband in the front passenger seat and their kids, 6 and 9, in the backseat.
The drivers popped wheelies and motioned at Garcia to back off.
“They’re braking in front of us, they’re trying to make me crash into them,” the mom said.
While the mom applauded the NYPD for bulldozing nearly 100 illegal dirt bikes and ATVs last week, she wondered, especially after her own experience, whether it’s enough.
“It’s definitely scary that it’s escalating to this point and we don’t see any change,” she said.
For Garcia, the trauma of her Sunday evening encounter with riders did not set in until she finally managed to escape them by darting off at an exit.
“When I finally for off at 79th Street, I called the police back, that’s when I felt helpless because my children should not have to live like that,” she said.
NYPD Chief Jeffrey Maddrey recently said police would handle incidents with illegal bikes in a “strategic and tactical way. He said police have ways of “coming up in a stealthy manner and taking the vehicles again without chasing them.” Nearly 2,000 illegal bikes were seized in the first six months of the year, police said. That’s nearly an 88 percent increase when compared to the same time period last year.
PIX11 shared Garcia’s story with Mayor Eric Adam’s office. A spokesperson reiterated NYPD actions so far are just the beginning. He noted there’s a lot of work to be done to rid the city of these illegal vehicles.
“The crushing of these bikes showed the Adams administration’s commitment to enforcing the law and ridding New York City streets of these loud, intimidating, dangerous and illegal vehicles,” the spokesperson said. “We will continue working and taking action every day to keep New Yorkers and everyone visiting our city safe on our streets.”