![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/nypd-raid-11th-street.jpg\")
Officers from the 9th Precinct spent around 45 minutes looking at bikes before abandoning the raid. Photo: Sophia Lebowitz<\/p>\nCops abandoned a hastily planned raid of a makeshift e-bike parking lot used by hundreds of delivery workers on Wednesday morning \u2013 prompting community leaders to call on Mayor Mamdani to create an infrastructure at the ad-hoc worker hub.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have an administration that says one thing about immigrants and the dignity of workers and then we have a police department that is left over from the last administration that seems to be totally different,\u201d Community Board 3 District Manager Susan Stetzer told Streetsblog.<\/p>\n
Officers from the 9th Precinct spent around 45 minutes looking at bikes before abandoning the raid. Photo: Sophia Lebowitz<\/p>\n
When Streetsblog arrived at 11th Street and First Avenue at 8:30 a.m. on Wednesday, workers had already re-organized the hundreds of bikes to be mostly on the south side of the block and out of the taxi relief areas in front of the Madina Masjid Islamic Council of America.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Cops from the local precinct showed up at around 9 a.m. The commanding officer of the Ninth Precinct<\/a>, Deputy Inspector Pamela Jeronimo, claimed that the bikes parked neatly on the street in what would otherwise be space used by car drivers for the same purpose were in violation of \u201cthe law.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIf they\u2019re not on a bike rack, then that\u2019s outside of the law. [Bikes] are blocking parking for cars,\u201d she said. \u201cThese are violations. It\u2019s just the way the law is written, I didn\u2019t write it.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n There is actually nothing in the city\u2019s vehicle and traffic code that prohibits bike users from parking against the curb in un-metered spots. Mopeds and scooters are allowed to park at an angle to the curb, in the same way the workers are parking their e-bikes.<\/p>\n When asked by Streetsblog why New Yorkers are able to park their private cars, but not their bikes, on the street for free, NYPD on the scene doubled down.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cYou can\u2019t store personal property on the street,\u201d said Matt Russo, a managing attorney at the NYPD. \u201cA bike is personal property and a car is not.\u201d\u00a0(You might want to let that sink in for a second.)<\/p>\n One passerby thought of it differently.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI order delivery, these people have every right to be there, it\u2019s never bothered me,\u201d said Willaim Kelly, who lives near the delivery worker hub. \u201cThey\u2019re both modes of transport, they [cops] should be encouraging people to use bikes and not drive cars.\u201d<\/p>\n The area looked clean and orderly, thanks to weekly cleanups organized by the nearby community organization, Cafewal<\/a>. The bike parking in the area isn\u2019t concentrated to just that block; clusters of bikes spill over to the sidewalk on First Avenue, further west on 11th Street adjacent to a Citi Bike dock and further east in some free on-street parking for cars, but are mostly organized.\u00a0<\/p>\n For around 45 minutes, the cops from the Ninth Precinct walked around looking at bikes and handed out fliers with directions for what to do if a bike is seized. Someone from the mayor\u2019s office showed up who would not provide a name to Streetsblog or say why he was there, and suddenly, the officers abandoned the mission, got into their cars and left.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t think we\u2019re doing any enforcement,\u201d said Russo when Streetsblog asked why they were leaving without taking the bikes the officers said were parked illegally. \u201cWhile this condition isn\u2019t perfect, I think it\u2019s in okay shape.\u201d<\/p>\n The area exists as an informal hub for the community of delivery workers of African descent who make deliveries in the East Village. Most live outside the area and choose to park their bikes with their peers so they don\u2019t get stolen. The app companies that employ these men as private-contractors are not required to provide them with bike storage, charging, or even spots to take breaks.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat company gets to use the city streets to operate their business?\u201d said Council Member Harvey Epstein (D-East Village) of the delivery app companies like DoorDash, Uber Eats and Grubhub. \u201cWe think the burden\u2019s on the app companies to find indoor locations for bikes to be placed. We\u2019re working on legislative and policy solutions along with the mayor\u2019s office to force those companies to take responsibility for the workers who are on the streets who have no place to go during the day and no place to put their bikes.\u201d<\/p>\n Tensions in the neighborhood have been high over the bike parking. During the previous administration, a simple rage-bait article from the New York Post could get the NYPD to raid<\/a> the area and take delivery workers\u2019 bikes.<\/p>\n Back in March, Streetsblog reported that the Mamdani administration had changed that approach. Instead of sending the NYPD in response to the Post labelling the area a \u201cjunkyard,\u201d it sent DSNY to help clean up\u2014 a welcome change, the advocates said at the time<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n Epstein said he is happy that no bikes were taken and said the anticlimactic result of the raid can be attributed to the community coming together to help workers organize the bikes and keep the area clean. <\/p>\n \u201cWe have worked hard to do an education campaign,\u201d he said. \u201cI think the education campaign was successful.\u201d<\/p>\n But still it doesn\u2019t feel like the administration is looking for a real solution, Stetzer, the district manager said.<\/p>\n \u201cThe only work the city is doing right now is to figure out the enforcement. I don\u2019t see anyone doing anything or talking to us about how to create infrastructure so that all this can be done legally and so the neighborhood doesn\u2019t have to bear the burden,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n Mayor Mamdani\u2019s preliminary budget allocated $25 million<\/a> to build secure bike parking<\/a> in the city. DOT recently selected California-based Tranzito<\/a> to build an initial 500 secure structures over the next five years, which the delivery workers would be able to use for a fee. <\/p>\n Those who showed up on Wednesday to observe and warn workers of the impending raid said they were confused about what the workers were supposed to do with their bikes, and that the NYPD had been teasing a raid all month and nothing happened.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe ask if they can park here, but they don\u2019t answer clearly,\u201d said Diamy, who works at Cafewal and informed workers via Whatsapp group about the NYPD\u2019s plans, and who didn\u2019t want his last name published. Diamy said the bike parking has been a conflict since he started at Cafewal in 2024. He said the police first wanted to do the raid on Oct. 7, then they pushed it to Oct. 21, at which point some workers moved their bikes to racks in Union Square, where some were stolen.\u00a0<\/p>\n The NYPD confirmed this timeline and told Streetsblog through a spokesperson that it \u201cworked with advocates and local leaders to inform them of this enforcement action and is responding to the complaints from the community.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Others who showed up to help workers saw the morning\u2019s events as a sign that the community wants to find a solution to the parking issue that won\u2019t hurt workers.<\/p>\n \u201cThere is definitely a stress on the block that people recognize but people are also very supportive of the workers,\u201d said Shawn Garcia, a CB3 member and the executive director of Earth Matter. \u201cSometimes the narrative that is put out there is that the community is up in arms about it, but I think that\u2019s not the case. It\u2019s more nuanced than that.\u201d<\/p>\n Still, landlords from nearby buildings on First Avenue are organizing a press conference on Thursday at noon at 180 First Ave. regarding the \u201congoing concerns about bicycles and delivery workers congregating on East 11th Street,\u201d according to an email sent to tenants in the area obtained by Streetsblog.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Cops abandoned a hastily planned raid of a makeshift e-bike parking lot used by hundreds of delivery workers…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":386229,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[9,56,63,65,64,52479],"class_list":["post-386228","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-new-york","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-nyc-headlines","tag-nyc-news","tag-promoted"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/386228","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=386228"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/386228\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/386229"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=386228"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=386228"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=386228"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/cops-11th-street-e-bike-raid.jpg\")
Officers argued that these parked bikes are illegally taking valuable car parking! Photo: Sophia Lebowitz<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/11th-street-e-bike-storage.jpg\")
\u201cOkay shape\u201d indeed. Photo: Sophia Lebowitz<\/p>\n