BPD: Bike group crimes get worse
The reports from Bakersfield residents and local law enforcement have been consistent and plentiful for months.
They often involve large groups of teen boys, with young adults sometimes included, riding bicycles on city streets, blatantly disregarding traffic laws, blocking the free flow of vehicles and running red lights causing cross-traffic to jam up as well.
But more recently, such groups are alleged to have been involved in more serious activities, with reports of theft, vandalism, resisting arrest and conspiracy.
And police are asking parents to be fully aware of what their teens are doing, and to take action if they might be involved in one or more of these bicycle groups.
“We determined that this was organized through social media,” Bakersfield Police Sgt. Andrew Tipton said of an incident that happened at Valley Plaza mall over the weekend. The gathering was broken up by police and resulted in 12 arrests, 11 of them juveniles.
According to Tipton, as the group rode toward the mall, they were “causing road hazards, and not following the rules of the road,” Tipton said.
Only a week earlier, there were reports of dozens of young bicyclists riding into a Rite-Aid store in downtown Bakersfield. That incident also saw several arrests, Tipton said.
There are some parallels, Tipton agreed, to the street intersection takeovers by large groups of young drivers, incidents that have also blocked traffic and raised risks to participants, bystanders and police.
Those arrested at Valley Plaza face a variety of charges, from traffic violations to resisting arrest and conspiracy.
Koral Hancharick, who works downtown, has seen the groups of young bicyclists up close.
“This is so crazy,” she said last spring in a social media post. “Today, I had another encounter with the downtown bike kids.”
She was northbound on Chester, stopped at the red light at 24th Street, when she looked in her rearview mirror and saw a group of bicycles coming up behind her car.
“The bicycles drove right past my car and (through) the red light without hesitation,” she wrote. “They just put their hand up to the one-way westbound traffic.”
They took over the northbound lanes of Chester Avenue, riding across all lanes, popping wheelies all the way to the Garces Circle, she said.
“It’s getting bad. They are not following traffic laws, and (they show a) total lack of respect.”
But her biggest concern, she said, is that someone is going to get hurt.