E-Bike Robbers Menace and Assault Delivery Workers
Late last month, robbers targeted delivery workers on the Upper West Side, physically threatening or assaulting them as they stole their electric bicycles. Police released images and a video of the robbers and are asking for the public’s help in finding them (unfortunately, the photos are pretty low-resolution and zooming in on the license plate yielded a blurry image). Here’s the police narrative:
Incident #1
On Saturday, November 30, 2019 at 1900 hours, in front of 322 West 80th Street, a 22-year-old male delivery employee was sitting on his electric delivery bike when three males exited a dark sedan, menaced him with a baseball bat and demanded his E-bike. The three males removed the E-bike and fled across the street. There were no injuries reported as a result of this incident.
Incident #2:
On Saturday, November 30, 2019 at 1905 hours, in front of 313 West 80th Street, a 21-year old male delivery employee sitting on his electric delivery bike was approached the males. One of the males punched the victim in the face, removed the E-bike and fled eastbound on 80th Street. The victim sustained minor bruising, but refused medical attention at the scene.
Anyone with information in regard to the is asked to call the NYPD’s Crime Stoppers Hotline at 1-800-577-TIPS (8477) or for Spanish, 1-888-57-PISTA (74782). The public can also submit their tips by logging onto the CrimeStoppers website at WWW.NYPDCRIMESTOPPERS.COM, or on Twitter @ NYPDTips.
All calls are strictly confidential.
Is anybody in control of the city?!
Horrific murder of Tessa, poor delivery people getting robbed, a woman is killed by a falling piece of bldg facade (bldg was cited since April!)
Where is the order and control that let us, regular citizen live and work in the city?
DITTO!
What the hell is happening to NYC???
Same as it ever was, same as it ever was.
We’re slipping back to the ‘80s
I’m confused. I thought crime was supposed to be dramatically down in NYC? But almost everyday, the WSR is reporting about robberies, rapes and murders occurring on the UWS. Is it possible that community policing isn’t working? That the almost total elimination of stop and frisk is back-firing. That ignoring the “broken windows” model that rescued NYC 20 years ago has come back to haunt us? That the no-bail law that takes affect on 1/1/20 will only add to a reduction in quality of life? Are we returning to the bad good old days of the 70’s and 80’s?
“But almost everyday, the WSR is reporting about robberies, rapes and murders occurring on the UWS. Is it possible that community policing isn’t”
It is possible things are worse. Or maybe crime is dropping but now, thanks to neighborhood blogs we know about all the crime happening in our ‘hood. Ten years ago, unless we knew the victim we wouldn’t known
It definitely feels like crime is getting worse. Is it though
Why can’t these e-bikes have a remote control where they can shut it off and disable or even a GPS to locate the e-bike like our new vehicles have?
Say what you will about the riding behavior of many e-bike deliverymen, these folks are poor, incredibly hard-working immigrants who rely on their bikes to earn a living (often to help support a family). I fond these crimes to be terribly repugnant and I hope the thieves are caught and punished appropriately.
Agree, no one complains that they are getting their food faster as well.
I am convinced that crime statistics and habitability on the upper west side are wrong – crime is up not down, more homeless (on the streets), dirtier streets full of garbage and dog feces, shuttered storefronts – What is going on?
Body cams for delivery workers?!?!?!?!
I feel compelled to comment by sharing something I read on another news publication which was published in the aftermath of the recent murder in Morningside Park…the below captures pretty much what I feel in response to this latest news…
https://nypost.com/2019/12/12/why-tessa-majors-murder-could-prove-a-turning-point-for-new-york/
“New York’s self-confidence is being tested almost daily — by the chaos in its subways, by the in-your-face panhandling on its streets, by crime and rumors of crime in the outer boroughs and by the senseless rhetoric of its political class, which holds that the only thing wrong with law enforcement in Gotham is that there is too damned much of it.
It is true that official city crime figures — putting murder aside — show major crime holding steady.
But few reasonable people take any de Blasio administration stats seriously. Its eagerness to cook the books is most apparent at the Department of Education — and it is simply too easy to reclassify a felony assault as a misdemeanor to take the city’s vaunted CompStat reports at face value. There is too much contrary, if largely anecdotal, evidence to allow that.
Then there is the sharp increase in permissive law enforcement policies — de Blasio’s effective abandonment of quality-of-life policing and the accompanying decisions of city district attorneys not to prosecute it. Petty dope dealers and fare-beaters are delighted — but it would be hugely naïve to think that all this isn’t having an encouraging effect right up the crime chain.
Meanwhile, New York’s political zeitgeist is making matters worse; the City Council’s demands to close Rikers Island and Albany’s recent bail “reforms” that have horrified DAs across the state loudly broadcast a new permissiveness that can only encourage the criminally inclined everywhere.”
I rarely see any police on the UWS.
Agree the only time i see them is when there is an event. Otherwise they are invisible from Lincoln center area
If you are going to read the West Side Rag crime stories, you have to get some perspective. They are, presumably, reporting every crime. Take the number of crimes (cumulative not just the ones you read about and remember) and divide by the population. That is the crime rate. Before I started reading WSR, I was unaware of any crime and felt 100% safe on the street. And statistically speaking, the number of crimes could go up and, with a growing underlying population, the crime rate would be going down. I am not trying to diminish the pain and suffering of every individual person, but despite WSR’s careful contextualization the belief here seems to be (a) here’s a crime so things are out of control and/or (b) our city officials are lying to us. Evidence?
I have always been aware of crime in NYC, uptown, downtown, Brooklyn and Queens, but I didn’t know specifically about crime on the UWS until I moved to this part of town. I feel less safe here then I did anywhere else because I don’t feel that people here really connect, and most of what I read here is reinforcing that, telling people they don’t believe crime is happening, and when they do see it they run in the opposite direction, and blame the victims for not letting go of their purses or for fighting back.
Last weekend there was a homeless man SCREAMING and running into traffic then swinging off the scaffolding in front of Citibank on 72nd and B’way, causing enough of a disturbance that everyone of the opposite side of the street to turned to look in that direction. I have never seen that happen before, people actually got involved, and before I could get out my phone most people had called for help and there was quickly a large police presence on that corner. The man went back to his spot on the corner but continued to scream and rock back and forth. As others have mentioned here, there are homeless and then there are those homeless in need of mental health care. He clearly needed help and I haven’t seen him back out there again. I would personally prefer a regular police presence in the neighborhood specifically for situations like this.
If we’re personally not doing anything wrong then what’s the problem with requesting more police presence to literally POLICE these situations and be on hand when there a fight breaking out or an attack on a delivery person, or just anyone walking down the street minding their own business. In that one instance I just felt like people really wanted to come together and do something about the situation in this neighborhood.
Impose
” stop and frisk” and encourage cops to get OUT of their cars and foot patrol on the streets……….make their presence known. The only time I see a cop in Hamilton Heights, they are stopping for goodies at Cafe One.
There is no crime there is no crime….. Keep repeating
Same here in Los Angeles, LAPD and Mayor Garshitty did away with stop and frisk a few years ago and street crime escalated. Now tons of burglaries, robberies, car jacking, bike thefts, home invasions in what used to be good neighborhoods.
i look around when i walk in the streets on Bway around 96th, and on the deserted side streets, including late at night, and i feel perfectly safe. and the people i see also seem to feel safe, there are many out at night, including women. I have never seen a violent crime incident that i can recall in the last 30 years. (I got pickpocketed on the subway once a few years ago.)
if WSR reports every single crime on the UWS, the entire blog will be taken up with crime reports. What about devoting equal time to housing (landlord crime), which is barely reported? Or schools? Or homelessness? or health care (never reported on WSR, that i can recall). One would get the impression we are in the midst of a crime wave. We are not.
Bruce, did you read the article or did you go straight to the comments section? The article states, “Police released images and a video of the robbers and are asking for the public’s help”. Do you think it’s unreasonable for WSR to address this ask from the police to make our neighborhood safer? The fact that you haven’t seen an incident means you were lucky to be at the right place at the right time. Had you been around the 80-th street & Riverside on Nov 30 at 7PM, you might have witnessed two crimes as reported above…
response to LK:
you are misinterpreting what i said. If the police are asking for help, as was the case with this incident, by all means carry the item. My point was that coverage of crime in WSR is helping to create the impression that the neighborhood is no longer safe, or that we are in the midst of a crime wave. Neither point is true.
The impression is also being created that crime and safety are the sole or overwhelming issues on the UWS. maybe this is true for some upper income people. But affordable housing, health care, education, senior services, mass transit, the survival of small businesses: these are all issues of at least comparable importance. The coverage in WSR of each issue pales in comparison to “crime.”
if we WERE in the midst of a crime wave, it seems like most of us would witness at least ONE incident over the course of several years.
Finally, there are some people who are trying to use some recent incidents, especially the tragic murder of the young Columbia student in Morningside Park, as political fodder. That is a false narrative.
Check out the police comp stat page, it covers everything. I heard something on NY1 about crime increasing so I checked this and I don’t see anything indicating that crime has significantly decreased. https://compstat.nypdonline.org/
You’re joking, right? Or trolling? Just because you have so lucky enough to have never been witness to, or a victim of crime, you feel that you can ignore the police reports, the headlines, as well as what everyone else in the neighborhood seems to be experiencing and pretend it isn’t thus?
And by the way, I would guess that our lower income friends would beg to differ with your comment that the issue of crime is only important to “upper-income people.”
response to UWSMan:
UWSMan said:
“And by the way, I would guess that our lower income friends would beg to differ with your comment that the issue of crime is only important to ‘upper-income people.'”
That is not even close to what I wrote. What I wrote was:
“The impression is also being created that crime and safety are the sole or overwhelming issues on the UWS. maybe this is true for some upper income people. But affordable housing, health care, education, senior services, mass transit, the survival of small businesses: these are all issues of at least comparable importance.”
I wrote that crime is not the SOLE AND OVERWHELMING issue for most low and moderate income UWSers. That does not mean it is not an issue or is not important.