The number of criminal summonses handed out to bikers in the latest quarter of 2025 has surged by 10 times the number handed out in the previous quarter, according to a new report.
Mayor Eric Adams and NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch launched a new “Quality of Life Division” back in April. In the second quarter of 2025, according to Gothamist, the number of criminal summonses handed to bikers totaled nearly 6,000, a tenfold increase from the first quarter. That surpasses the total of 5,605 issued over the last seven years.
But social media evidence suggests the vast majority of bikers to land in criminal court are getting off with no fines or are seeing the $190 criminal fine reduced to a disorderly conduct fine of only $20.
“Probably 85 percent of all tickets I watched were getting dismissed for not enough information on the ticket, not just for bike violations but for all kinds of minor infractions,” wrote Reddit poster Decent_Bad_2874, who wrote about his experience at a July 3 court appearance to answer a criminal summons for running a red light on a Citi Bike.
A public defender argued on the poster’s behalf that there was incomplete information on the summons, and that was enough to get the complaint dismissed.
“All in all, it was a much less stressful and scary experience than I expected, though of course it was extremely . . . annoying.” The poster said the whole process took him about an hour and a half. The one red-light ticket that was not dismissed outright was given a 60-days APD [adjournment pending dismissal], according to the Reddit post.
From the start, many bikers objected that the criminalization push means bikers are facing stiffer penalties than a car that is caught running a red light. A car owner can plead online and avoid a court appearance and a criminal record.
The new Quality of Life Division of the NYPD is supposed to crack down on everyday issues (311s) that aren’t necessarily emergencies (911s). In other words, the division will respond to complaints that were otherwise being overlooked, such as noise, illegal parking, outdoor drug use, homeless encampments, and, controversially, cyclists of both the pedal, e-bike, and moped variety.
Commissioner Tisch when she unveiled the program said that e-bikes, scooters, and bicycles don’t have the same license-plate requirements as cars, making it difficult to penalize reckless cyclists.
“Every person is obligated to follow the very basic rules of the road when it comes to traffic safety. Compliance is not optional,” Tisch said at a City Council hearing in May. “We will not tolerate e-bikes driving recklessly, running red lights, ignoring stop signs, driving on the sidewalk, and riding against traffic.”
Officers are being deployed across 14 corridors in NYC to monitor biking, four of which are in Manhattan: Second Avenue, Sixth Avenue, Delancey Street, and 125th Street.
According to StreetsBlogNYC, the criminalization of cyclists is unwarranted because there are far more accidents involving cars and pedestrians than bikes and pedestrians. But according to Janet Schroeder, the co-founder of NYC Electric Vehicle Safety Alliance, the vast majority of accidents involving pedestrians and bikes is never reported, rendering the stats all but useless.
“We have 104 victims in our group,” Schroeder told Straus News. “One is almost blind, one is paralyzed on the right side of their body. Got five broken hips, got broken clavicles. I could go through the injuries. Six of them, six of them, have an accurate police report that shows up in the NYC DOT stats,” she said.
There is also a concern in some quarters that the Trump administration crack down on illegal migrants coupled with the surge in bike criminalization is an attempt to drive migrants into the criminal justice system, making it easier to deport them.
“This is a direct attack on immigrant workers,” Ligia Guallpa, executive director of Los Deliveristas Unidos, a project representing delivery workers, told the New York Times. “The intent is to criminalize workers and to create a situation where our communities could be targets for deportation.”
In addition to the immigration concerns, some argue the pursuit of bikers is a crackdown on an environmentally friendly form of transport.
“If we want to encourage cycling—which is healthy, which is green, which is safer, which makes people happier, which is better for our tight city—we need to be thinking of how to make it more accessible and fair for people, not less accessible and fair,” Cecil Scheib, an East Village protester, told Gothamist.
But Tisch is unwavering about the complaints she gets from New Yorkers, saying many involve e-bikes and scooters “either out of control or up on the sidewalk,” she said at a press conference with Adams.
One Reddit thread published last week from a car driver was in favor of the Quality of Life Division, just for different reasons. In fact, most users were outraged about illegal parking.
“I’m sometimes stuck in a legal parking spot for 20, 30 minutes before some asshole deigns to move his double-parked car and then screams at me for being annoyed,” wrote a user who goes by boomzgoesthedynamite. He was presumably referring to his car being blocked, not a bicycle.
“These guys are going to need to start with themselves if they’re cracking down on double parking,” agreed another poster identified as Pinkydoodle2.
Despite the otherwise stringent enforcement on these 311s, when the directive was first introduced, many summonses were being dismissed, according to StreetBlogsNYC, which went to court on May 19, the first day that recipients of criminal complaints were due in court. And if more recent Reddit posts are correct, that trend continues to this day.
“The degree to which the process is a punishment depends greatly on who you are and how much money you have,” posted a Reddit user who goes by the tag RChickenMan. “If you’re an immigrant, it could mean fear of deportation. If you’re a citizen but poor, it could mean losing a day’s pay, having to figure out childcare, maybe even losing your job if your boss is vindictive enough. But if you’re a well-off tech worker, you’ll be laughing with your boss about how you’re taking a day off to deal with this ridiculous ticket you got.”
Not all agree. “I’m compensated well and get [paid time off] and it’s still very stressful and upsetting,” posted TripNo8994. “I’m not denying that immigrants and people of lower income have it much worse than me and I’m lucky in comparison. But I’m definitely not laughing.”
“This is a direct attack on immigrant workers.” — Ligia Guallpa, executive director of Los Deliveristas Unidos.