The Legal Aid Society is sounding the alarm over statistics that reveal startlingly disproportionate rates of tickets issued to New Yorkers stopped for riding bikes on the sidewalk. Out of 440 tickets for biking on the sidewalk issued between 2018 and 2019, 86.4% went to black and hispanic New Yorkers – despite the DOT saying white cyclists comprise 40% of all bikers in the city.

“The NYPD always criminalizes Black people at higher rates for just about every thing imaginable. For low level community issues, Black and Latinx people are targeted, ticketed, arrested and put through the system at unconscionable disproportionate rates,” said Anne Oredeko, supervising attorney of the Racial Justice Unit at The Legal Aid Society. “The NYPD needs to be defunded and poor Black communities and other communities of color need those financial resources to be pumped back into them. Especially since through racially discriminatory enforcement like this, for decades, the NYPD has continued to steal financial resources from Black and Latinx communities.”