By Adam Swift
Motorized scooters, bicycles, and mopeds can cause headaches and worse for city residents, especially during the warm weather months.
At Monday night’s city council meeting, representatives from the police department addressed some of those concerns and how the city can address them.
“This has been an ongoing problem that started in the last couple of years and has recently gotten worse with the scooters and the motorized bicycles,” said Police Chief David Callahan. “There are some rules and regulations on them, but there are not a lot. They have to have helmets with the scooters and they have to be registered once a year; but the one thing that I see is that there is no insurance, so if they get involved in an accident and they don’t have a policy, it is a problem.”
However, Callahan said the biggest issues are typically caused by riders who don’t follow even the minimum of the rules and regulations.
“The biggest problem is they don’t stop for the police,” said Callahan. “We’ve had many instances where we attempt to stop them because they are operating erratically and not following the rules of the road or they are driving on the sidewalks.”
Callahan said it is department policy for the department to not endanger the public and chase the motorized vehicles.
“It’s a challenging issue for us,” said the chief. “We’ve seized a lot of them and stopped people where it is either unregistered or unlicensed or there are other issues with the scooter and they don’t even come and get them. A couple of the local tow companies have dozens of them that are just abandoned.”
Callahan said that as the weather gets warmer, the department will try to do more proactive enforcement to get more of the illegal motorized vehicles off of the streets.
“The larger issue at hand that I see are the scooters during the warmer months, and the mopeds coming in large groups and driving erratically through the city,” said Sgt. James Rose, the head of the police department’s traffic division. “The issue we are having with them is when we go to initiate the motor vehicle stop, the majority of them are not stopping for the police, which makes it hard for us to enforce.”
Other cities and towns have initiated some measures to help with enforcement, including using drones to track the vehicles, and using unmarked vehicles.
Rose noted that many of the issues are caused by younger riders, so he said the city could work with the schools to provide education and identify potential issues.
Councillor-at-Large Juan Pablo Jaramillo said the city could also look at taking a regional approach to the issue with surrounding communities.
Ward 4 Councillor Paul Argenzio said the police department could also look at stationing unmarked vehicles outside the high school when classes are over and there is typically an uptick on motorized scooters on the streets and sidewalks.
