(NEW YORK) According to several New York City news blogs, the NYPD has gone on an unprecedented bike-confiscation rampage on Houston Street, in Manhattan's East Village/LES, clipping U-locks and confiscating bikes by the dozen, without warning. Locks are being clipped, and bikes are being hurled into flatbed NYPD trucks, say online journalists and eyewitnesses.
According to sources, no information has been given by the NYPD as to how bike owners will reclaim their property.
Blog posts also claim the confiscations came without warning, leaving East Village/LES bike owners bereft of their predominant means of transportation.
According to the blog ThisIsFYF,the massive bike-confiscation initiative is defended by the NYPD as a counter-terrorism measure in connection with President Obama's speech, on Thursday, at Cooper Union, eight blocks north of Houston. According to ThisIsFYF , bikes are being removed because they might actually be pipe bombs disguised as bikes.
Online critics of the NYPD's latest bike-confiscation initiative were quick to note that bicycle pipe bombs were probably much less a threat than car/truck bombs, so, they asked: why weren't the cars and trucks parked near Cooper Union also "confiscated" as a preventative counter-terrorism measure?
Other online news sources hinted at a darker motive for this latest salvo from the NYPD in the NYC/NYPD bike war: the ongoing trial of former NYPD officer Patrick Pogan, who faces charges in connection to his alleged assault of a cyclist during a Critical Mass rally several years ago, in Times Square.
Is the bike confiscation on East Houston "retaliation" for the trial that former NYPD officer Pogan is facing
these days on Centre Street? Streetsblog has an astute analyisis.
