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NYPD crackdown on migrants’ mopeds points to escalating tensions in NYC

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Sam Costanza for New York Daily News

Police crack-down on unregistered scooters being used by food deliverymens in Midtown Manhattan on Friday, July 21, 2023.

By Josephine Stratman | jstratman@nydailynews.com | New York Daily News

PUBLISHED: September 9, 2023 at 11:49 a.m. | UPDATED: September 9, 2023 at 11:51 a.m.

As migrants continue to flood into New York, the political rhetoric turns increasingly heated and
opportunities for the new arrivals remain scarce, a new point of contention is emerging between
the new arrivals and established New Yorkers:

Mopeds .

In response to escalating community complaints, the NYPD has cracked down on illegal mopeds.
They’ve hit at least four different migrant shelters across the city. Two of the raids have spiraled
into chaotic sidewalk brawls with punches flying and arrests made. Thursday, six men were
,

arrested during a scuffle with police at a Humanitarian Emergency Response and Relief Center on
Jefferson Street in Bushwick .

Migrants told the Daily News the city is robbing them of one of the few avenues they have to make
a living. Without work authorization, their bikes and mopeds bring them income as food delivery
workers and the migrants in dire need of money as they try to feed themselves and their families.

Theodore Parisienne
16 mopeds were taken by the cops just before 8 a.m. on Thursday morning, just as many migrants were leaving the shelter for
work..

“They took my way of working,” Yeral Polaco, 26, from Venezuela, told The News in Spanish outside
the Brooklyn shelter. “I have to get a new motorcycle. It’s very difficult. I don’t know what I’m going
to do now… This is how we work and they took away our source of employment.”

Polaco’s moped and 15 others were taken by the cops just before 8 a.m. on Thursday morning, just
as many were leaving the shelter for work.

Advocates say the crackdown is counterproductive and ironic. It will make it harder for migrants to
make enough money to leave the shelters and become self-sufficient, forcing them to stay in the
shelter system longer and prolonging the crisis.

They also point out that, as Adams calls on the federal government for emergency work
authorization, a city agency is taking away one of the few avenues migrants have for consistent
income.

“It’svery hypocritical of the NYPD, while Adams is calling on expedited work permits, to take away
people’s source of income,” Sergio Uzurin, a mutual aid organizer, said.

Backlash
The confiscations are just one more point of rising tension as local Republicans drum up anti-
rhetoric and Mayor Eric Adams uses extreme language, saying recently the migrant crisis
will “destroy” the city .

According to local elected officials and 311 data, complaints have shot up around the two shelters
where fights broke out between cops and migrants.

Citywide moped seizures have skyrocketed this year, according to data from the NYPD. So far in
2023, there have been 8,206 seizures, compared to 3,842 during the same timespan last year, a
DCPI spokesperson said.

Theodore Parisienne
Mopeds are pictured outside a Humanitarian Emergency Response and Relief Center on Jefferson Street in Bushwick on
Thursday, after six men were arrested during a scuffle with police.

These issues aren’t exclusive to migrants, and moped use has increased across the city — but
because of migrants’ limited paths to legal work, many “rent” out accounts on delivery apps from
others who legally can work, making deliveries on apps like UberEats and Grubhub. With no place
to charge e-bikes many migrants are now using the more expensive but faster mopeds.
,

The Stratford Arms shelter on the Upper West Side was the site of a brawl just last week, when the
NYPD confiscated 15 vehicles, police said, in a raid that was spurred by community complaints.

Councilmember Gale Brewer said that her office has received an outsize number of complaints
about the shelter.

She says she’s sympathetic to the difficulties migrants face in finding work — “but if you’re riding
around on a moped, they’re getting taken because they’re illegal,” Brewer said. The conflict is
unfolding amid broader concern across the city about the dangers posed by e-bikes and mopeds to
pedestrians.

The four mopeds, motorcycle and scooter the cops took at the West 70th Street shelter were all
unregistered, according to the NYPD. Nine bicycles were chained to a pole, and confiscated
because that violates a local law. One woman, age 20, was arrested trying to prevent an officer
from taking a bike and hitting an officer.

Migrants scuffle with police outside a Humanitarian Emergency Response and Relief Center on Jefferson St. in Brooklyn on
Thursday, Sept. 7, 2023, while NYPD officers attempted to confiscate unregistered and illegally parked mopeds. Six men were
arrested.

The second skirmish, in Brooklyn, on Thursday erupted after the NYPD responded to community
complaints in the normally quiet, industrial area.

311 data shows that complaints have skyrocketed since last year. There was a single 311 complaint
from June to September of 2022 for the address. In the same time period this year, there were 43
complaints.

Need to work
As migrants wait for work authorization and local elected officials push for the federal government
to accelerate work permits during the crisis some are calling out the city government for
,

confiscating mopeds instead of helping the migrants.

“This mayor can’t have it both ways: saying we care about you and want you to thrive while at the
same time targeting migrant shelters in this way,” Councilmember Jennifer Gutierrez said in a
statement. “He is fully aware of the role informal jobs play in helping these folks get on their feet
and this was so clearly a missed opportunity to educate and communicate regulations and rules on
proper vehicle registrations.

“While the confiscation was in response to community complaints, I am disappointed at how these
actions were performed and don’t agree with the fear and intimidation tactics that the NYPD is
performing on behalf of the mayor,” Gutierrez added.

Migrants scuffle with police outside a Humanitarian Emergency Response and Relief Center on Jefferson St. in Brooklyn on
Thursday, Sept. 7, 2023, while NYPD officers attempted to confiscate unregistered and illegally parked mopeds. Six men were
arrested.

Theo Moore, Vice President of Policy and Programs at the New York Immigration Coalition called ,

for more outreach to educate migrants about regulations surrounding bikes, both for their benefit
and their neighbors’.

“Ifyou take away their e-bike, scooter, moped, not only are you taking away their means of
transportation, you’re also taking away the individual’s means of providing for themselves, you’re
essentially taking away their jobs,” Moore said. “You’re basically crushing an individual.”

Jesús Ravelo, 28, is the father of two children, ages seven and eight, two younger brothers, a 13-
ear-old and a nine-year-old and his two aging parents back in his home country of Venezuela.
They rely on him to send money homes that he makes driving his moped to complete UberEats
deliveries.

“They depend on me,” Ravelo, who lives at the Jefferson Street HERRC said. “If one day I don’t
work. Then, one day, they don’t eat. And my children don’t understand when I tell them I don’t have
a job today.”

Ravelo said that, when he was staying at the Brooklyn Cruise Terminal, Mayor Adams paid him and
the other migrants a visit .

“We asked him to help us with the work permits because all we want is to work,” Ravelo said. “We
aren’t all bad — many people call us bad, and not all of us are bad. The majority of us are parents,
and we help our parents, we help our children.”

Migrants scuffle with police outside a Humanitarian Emergency Response and Relief Center on Jefferson St. in Brooklyn on
Thursday, Sept. 7, 2023, while NYPD officers attempted to confiscate unregistered and illegally parked mopeds. Six men were
arrested.

Two weeks ago, an NYPD raid on another Brooklyn shelter left dozens of migrants out of work
after the cops confiscated around 30 mopeds outside the shelter, a repurposed Blink Fitness on the
border of Bed-Stuy and Bushwick.

Juan Esteban, 30, was able to get his back. But some weren’t so lucky, because they didn’t have
papers for the vehicles, he said.

Esteban, who’s originally from Colombia and arrived in New York four months ago, paid around
$1500 for his bike — an expensive, but necessary purchase, as he can’t get work elsewhere, and
delivering Uber Eats is a decent way to make money.

“Ihad to sit around doing nothing,” Esteban said in Spanish. “My savings didn’t last, but, thank god, I
got it back yesterday. But, I was stressed, of course. I was worried. You want to get your motorcycle
back and to work.”

Josephine Stratman Reporter |

Josephine Stratman covers New York’s emergence from the effects of the coronavirus pandemic for the Daily News. She is a graduate
of DePaul University and previously worked for the Chicago Sun-Times.

2023 September 9

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