Thursday’s Headlines: Mourning Becomes Enforcement Edition

On Wednesday, the NYPD was at it again — ticketing cyclists at a Williamsburg intersection just days after cyclist Allie Huggins was killed by a hit-and-run driver.

Bike riders consider this practice so insensitive (“Why are we getting tickets when it was a driver who killed the bike rider?”) that in 2019, then-Chief of Department Terence Monahan promised to stop doing it.

Well, so much for promises. In a post on Wednesday, a Reddit user published a photo of a cop giving a cyclist a ticket at the intersection of Meserole and Leonard streets, and expressed contempt for the police enforcement effort.

“This seems completely ridiculous,” posted visuallyblind. “I didn’t personally witness the crash, but my friend who was coming over at the time did. Biker was in bike lane and Tesla came flying down the street at 50+mph and ran straight through the [cyclist]. NYPD will pull out all the stops around here to ticket bikers, but it’s a completely law free zone for cars.”

We asked NYPD to explain why it is still persecuting cyclists after one of their own is killed by a driver and the agency had — in fairness — a full explanation.

“The 90 Precinct’s enforcement strategy reflects a prioritization of the most dangerous violations by motor vehicles, which make up 98.4 percent of all summonses issued,” the NYPD said in a statement. “Bicycle violation summonses … make up only 1.6 percent of the summons total. The 90th Precinct has had a notable increase in bicycle injuries year-to-date. Bicycle injuries rose 14.1 percent (113 vs. 99), the highest in the city. When addressing bicycles, the 90th Precinct targets the most egregious violations and focuses activity on high-volume corridors where conflicts between cyclists, motorists, and pedestrians are greatest. This strategy reflects the dual goals of reducing overall crash risk while responding to the specific traffic challenges in the 90th Precinct. This strategy has been ongoing throughout the year.”

Meanwhile, the NYPD said it has not caught the hit-and-run Tesla owner who killed Huggins early on Saturday. At the restaurant where Huggins worked, Anais in Cobble Hill, a shrine grew by the hour, and the eatery said it would have a public memorial to its crew member on Monday at 7 p.m.

A sandwich board read, “We love you, Allie. Forever and always.”

In other news:

• The big story yesterday was the Trump administration’s decision to write a new rule to outlaw federal minority- and women-owned business programs hours before the federal shutdown — then blame the shutdown for blocking $18 billion in New York region transit infrastructure on the grounds that they violated the new rule. (NY Times, NYDN, NY Post, Gothamist, The City)
• Later in the day, a judge issued a temporary restraining order on the funding cut. (NY Post)
• Fail-sella: Staten Island Borough President Vito Fossella rallied against safer intersections … on the same day that his local paper reported the death of yet another Staten Island pedestrian. (Advance)
• E-bikes could be so good for cities, if they weren’t so reflexively wedded to cars. Now it’s time for federal pre-tax commuter benefits to be allowed to be used for Citi Bike. (Grist)
• Enough, Eric. Enough. We get it. You think the world of yourself. (Gothamist)
• Former Council Member Ken Fisher is high on the Interborough Express. (amNY)
• As Streetsblog reported in August, the cops are exploiting a terrible design at the Manhattan entrance to the Williamsburg Bridge bike path. Bike lawyer Steve Vaccaro did his own video yesterday, but our janky CMS won’t let us embed it. (Instagram)