Officers Stopping Cyclists in Central Park

From Streetsblog commenter Steve:

Project “Look” may include new programmatic law enforcement efforts
targeting bicyclists. Each morning this week we were confronted by a
Parks & Rec. Department law enforcement personnel operating
checkpoints at different locations on the Central Park Loop.

Today’s checkpoint was different than the previous two. There were
two serial checkpoints, with the officers at the first one (located
midway up a downhill stretch) gathering information on the bicyclists
passing them and radioing it down to a more formal checkpoint at the
foot of the hill.

We were actually waved through a red light by the officers up the
hill, I think because they saw that we were going to stop in time for
the red light and thus yield no useful information for the officer at
the foot of the hill.

The officer at the foot of the hill didn’t seem to be giving out
tickets, only warnings. However, we saw him grabbing and detaining
bicyclists who attempted to evade him by riding in the traffic lane
outside the cones, and giving them extra-long warnings. One of these
counseling sessions was actually pretty intense, with the bicyclist
attempting to wrench his arm free.

Photo by ifreedman500/Flickr. Click through to see the shot with notes added.