Obama’s No Longer Your New Bicycle – NYPD Yanks Bikes Along Motorcade Route

I wonder if the secret service or NYPD made that call? It’s boneheaded PR either way.

I like Bike Snob’s comment best. To paraphrase: They think that there might be a bomb so they send out cops in windbreakers instead of the bomb squad. It shows how much they care about the police.

I see a lot of pipes along that route, every barricade is a potential problem, not to mention the bikes.

First I agree this is uncalled for, the way it was executed that is. Notification should have been given that people’s moveable property has to be moved by a certain time and date or it is will be removed by the authorities.

Second, this can not and should not be blamed on President Obama. I doubt he specifically said” “remove all bicycles along my motorcade route and do not give notice of doing so.”

More than likely this was decided by the chief secret service officer responsible for the safety along the route prior to the President’s arrival there. They start planning this stuff far in advance and send and advance team to do so. The person in charge likely told NYPD to remove or have removed all moveable property, both public and private. It was likely up to the NYPD on how it was done. They were told what to do and it was left to them on how to do it, so I doubt the Secret Service made the decision to remove the bicycles with out notification of the owners. It is very likely this was all on the NYPD. and knowing their bias against cyclists, depsite what is stated publicly, they are probably the ones who made the decision to do this in the manner they did.

Another thing to consider is perhaps there was a mis-communication within NYC departments and a notification that was supposed to have been sent out, wasn’t or was sent late and there was a deadline by which the property had to be removed so the NYPD had no choice. We are talking about a very large municipality and a miscommunictation like this can easily happen.