Yo, Cops, Get Out of the Bike Lane!

The relationship between police and people who ride bikes in New York has never been all hearts and flowers. Many regular riders complain that the NYPD expends disproportionate resources on bicycle ticket blitzes while allowing drivers to violate traffic regulations with impunity. Some feel that the police don’t investigate aggressively enough in cases where people on bikes have been killed by drivers, as was Mathieu Lefevre. And a lot of people in the cycling community still remember the 2010 case of a cop who was caught on video pushing a Critical Mass rider from his bike, convicted of falsifying a report on the incident, and then let off without serving any time or even doing community service.

Now a brand-new Tumblr blog, Cops in Bike Lanes, documents just what the name describes, publishing photo after photo documenting NYPD vehicles obstructing the city’s much-vaunted dedicated bike infrastructure.