Jasmijn Rijcken asked a tourist to take this picture of her on the Brooklyn Bridge on May 3.

While it’s shocking to think that, in this day and age, a New York City police officer would stop and harass a female cyclist for biking in a short skirt, as Jasmijn Rijcken said happened to her last month, it also seems to fit the zeitgeist, coming amidst the well-publicized NYPD bike crackdown and following the sordid trial of two cops on rape charges (and their stunning acquittal). But when Streetsblog and Gothamist readers discovered that Rijcken touts her expertise in “guerrilla marketing” on her LinkedIn profile (sample prose: “We provide marketing in disguise and make YOU the talk of the town”), rumors started fluttering on Twitter that the story might have been too perfectly placed. Was it all a ploy to drum up publicity for the bikes that she was in town to promote?

The biking-while-sexy storyline has certainly garnered a lot of attention, getting picked up on Gothamist, the Daily News, Gawker and lots of blogs, most of which don’t seem to mention Rijcken’s bike company, Vanmoof. So Streetsblog reviewed the available information, double- and triple-checked with our sources, and spoke to a few more people. Our conclusion: It’s much more likely that Rijcken is the victim of harassment than the diabolical mastermind of an intricate viral marketing campaign.

Rijcken’s story is difficult to prove or disprove beyond the shadow of a doubt. No ticket was issued, no friends were with her to witness the episode, and Rijcken did not obtain the name or badge number of the cop. All of which is perfectly plausible given that Rijcken was a foreign tourist in an unfamiliar city, who committed no actual offense. But it leaves a dearth of direct evidence.

The indirect evidence is persuasive, however, starting with the fact that Rijcken told her American acquaintances about the incident the day it happened — May 3 — nearly three weeks before she posted a short note about it on Facebook.

George Bliss and Marlo Medrano of Hudson Urban Bicycles, a West Village bike shop, confirmed that Rijcken described an encounter with NYPD when she saw them later the same day. “She told it to us at the store,” said Bliss, “the night it happened.” Rijcken was in town for the New Amsterdam Bike Show and had a business meeting with Bliss and Medrano at their shop, which carries her company’s bikes. When she arrived, they said, she told them what had taken place.

Bliss’s recap of Rijcken’s account more or less matched what Rijcken told Streetsblog last Friday: An NYPD officer stopped her, accused her of endangering people by wearing a skirt that would distract drivers, took her ID and only let her off once she said she was Dutch. Medrano confirmed that she was wearing the skirt shown in the widely-circulated photograph of Rijcken on her bike, which Rijcken said was taken by other tourists while she was sightseeing on the Brooklyn Bridge, before she was stopped by the police.

After the meeting, Rijcken said, she headed back to her hotel and changed into pants before heading out on foot to grab dinner. (Rijcken told the Daily News that she was “on my way back to the hotel when [the police stop] happened and I changed into pants.”) The next day she flew back to Amsterdam.

Upon returning to the Netherlands, Rijcken was in no hurry to get the word out about the encounter with NYPD. Nearly three weeks passed. She says that’s when she had a conversation with a friend that prompted her to share the story publicly. “I was telling her about my trip to the states, about the bike show, about biking in the city, about the green lanes and also about the cop incident,” she said. “She thought it was very crazy. And then I put it on Facebook to see what others thought of it. If it was a cultural difference.”

On May 23 she posted a photo and short note about the incident on her Facebook page and on a LinkedIn discussion about the NYPD citing a female cyclist for riding with a bag slung from her handlebars. Rijcken’s LinkedIn comment got picked up by a local trade publication. Three days later, she emailed Joanna Virello and Stephanie Musso, her American acquaintances who organized the New Amsterdam Bike Show, asking if the New York Press would be interested in the story. (The Bike Show is co-produced by Manhattan Media, publisher of New York Press and other local NYC outlets.) New York Press editor Jerry Portwood said he waited to pursue the story until he could get a reporter to confirm it.

Another two weeks passed. On June 9, Virello posted the photo of Rijcken on the Brooklyn Bridge to the New Amsterdam Bike Show Facebook photo wall. A link to the photo from the Bike Show Twitter feed led Streetsblog to notice the story.

Is it possible that Rijcken planned this scenario all in advance, invented a story out of whole cloth, strategically invited tourists to snap her photograph, lied to her American business partners with the intent of bolstering her future credibility, waited three weeks, posted to Facebook in order to embed a viral marketing campaign, then repeated the fabricated story to several media outlets? It’s not completely inconceivable, but it comes close.

According to Rijcken, the practices she described as “guerrilla marketing” and “social media marketing” on her LinkedIn profile are far more straightforward, referring to tactics like gathering input on bike prototypes from Twitter followers, holding photo contests of customers with their bikes, or a yet-to-be completed project to design the boxes of their bicycles for reuse as extra-large paper airplanes.

Those practices are in line with how Nancy Samahito, a marketing manager at the non-traditional advertising firm Attack!, described guerrilla marketing. “Making up a story,” she said, is not the type of practice that marketers refer to when they describe their work as “guerrilla marketing.” But exploiting an experience to promote your brand, she added, would fit with the type of “social media marketing” that Rijcken mentions on her LinkedIn profile.

On the off chance that Rijcken has fooled us all, the hoax rumors have made her plot even more successful. Now Vanmoof has two Streetsblog posts under their belt.

Jasmijn Rijcken was stopped and almost ticketed by an NYPD officer for biking in this outfit. Her skirt, the officer said, was too distracting for drivers.

Rijcken was in town for the New Amsterdam Bike Show on April 30. After she had dismounted on Broadway in SoHo, an NYPD officer stopped, berated, and threatened to ticket Rijcken for wearing a skirt while cycling, which, it must be noted, is entirely legal and common. Rijcken says the officer told her that her skirt was dangerous because she would distract drivers and potentially cause them to crash.

“I was standing there next to my bike, looking at my map, and then this police guy stops and starts telling me about my skirt,” reported Rijcken. “At first I thought he was making a joke or maybe even a compliment, but then I found out he was serious because he got really mad.”

The officer got out of his car and threatened to ticket her, said Rijcken, even though, it bears repeating, there is no law against biking in a skirt. The justification for a potential ticket was the danger her exposed skin posed to everyone on the street. “That was the bottom line, that I was very dangerous,” said Rijcken. “I think every woman, even when walking in a skirt, would be dangerous then.”

According to Rijcken, the cop’s words were not merely an empty threat. He took her ID and only began to back down when he saw that she was Dutch. She hurriedly explained that in Amsterdam, it’s common for women to bike in skirts. In the end, the officer told her she should change into pants and let her go.

At the time, Rijcken said, she wasn’t sure that she hadn’t broken the law. “If you’re by yourself in a different country and a police guy comes really angrily at you, you get scared,” she said.

This is not the first time an NYPD officer has stopped cyclists for completely frivolous non-offenses. In April, a private school administrator received a ticket for biking with a tote bag on her handlebars. The police have not responded to a Streetsblog inquiry about Rijcken’s allegations.

Her harassment at the hands of the police has colored Rijcken’s perception of not only New York City but the United States. “I was shocked,” she said. “In Holland, people refer to America as the country of freedom.”

An NYPD bike enforcement cheat sheet instructs police officers to issue tickets for traffic laws that don't apply in New York City. Full image: PDF

Sometime between the ticket one cyclist received for turning right on red into Central Park and the ticket another received for riding with a bag slung over her handlebars, it became abundantly clear that NYPD’s “Operation Safe Cycle” is not really about safer cycling. Instead of applying the NYPD’s vaunted data-driven policing techniques to encourage safer and more courteous cycling behaviors, the department’s bike blitz seemingly consists of harassing cyclists and slapping them with large fines for the most minor transgressions.

In some cases, the fines are for non-existent violations. A cheat sheet circulated by police [PDF] indicates the department isn’t even limiting its bike enforcement to the offenses on the books.

According to reliable sources who obtained the sheet from police, the document was distributed by NYPD in February to assist officers in the bike ticketing blitz. The cheat sheet includes three violations that don’t apply in New York City, even though federal judges have made it plain to the NYPD on more than one occasion that such citations are bogus.

The sheet tells cops they can issue tickets for violating sections 1234 (a), (b), and (c) of the state’s vehicle and traffic law, which require cyclists to either ride in a bike lane or along the right side of the road, to ride no more than two abreast, and to come to a stop before turning onto a road from a driveway. None of those rules, however, apply in New York City.

“VTL 1234 is a section of the state vehicle and traffic law that New York City was given the authority by the state legislature to supercede,” explained attorney Mark Taylor [disclosure: Streetsblog has retained Taylor's firm for unrelated legal assistance managing freedom of information requests]. Just as New York City was able to ban drivers from making right turns on red, it was able to replace the requirements of VTL 1234.

While it’s a bit confusing that VTL 1234 doesn’t apply in New York City — you have to look in an entirely different legal code to find that out — the NYPD is intimately aware of which rules they can enforce in this case. “They have repeatedly been in front of courts and forced to admit that 1234 does not apply in New York,” said Taylor. “It has been very clear to the NYPD for a long, long time, so the idea that they are continuing to issue instructions to officers on the street to promulgate these laws that don’t apply in NYC is just amazing.”

The inclusion of an invalid law on the NYPD’s cheat sheet suggests that the bike blitz isn’t so much about enforcing the law, right or wrong, but an intentional campaign to make life more difficult for cyclists. A judge would quickly throw out any section 1234 ticket written in New York City, said Taylor.

It is not known how widely this document was distributed within the police department, nor if other guides to ticketing cyclists are in circulation. One traffic cop I spoke with at the corner of Crosby and Spring Streets in SoHo said he had never seen this document or anything similar, suggesting it isn’t in use citywide. Streetsblog has asked the NYPD press office to explain the document and received no reply.

NYPD has a track record of using cheat sheets that lead officers to issue wrongful summonses, and prior cases suggest that the department can be held accountable if supervisors encouraged officers to crib from the bike enforcement sheet. A federal judge found last year, for example, that the NYPD’s continued use of unofficial cheat sheets listing unconstitutional loitering statutes was evidence of the department’s “lax approach” to stopping that variety wrongful enforcement. So long as any supervising officers are aware of the cheat sheets, that case suggests, the department is to some degree responsible for the decision to knowingly enforce an inapplicable law.

It’s also plausible that this cheat sheet is responsible for the farcical arrest of a school administrator for carrying her totebag on her handlebars, an action which is perfectly legal. The sheet summarizes VTL 1235 as “carrying articles on bicycles,” a description which, to an officer without sufficient training, would seem to apply in this case. The full law clearly states otherwise, however: It prohibits carrying objects in such a way that cyclists can’t keep at least one hand on the handlebars. If a single sheet of paper is the extent of the instruction some officers are receiving before being sent out to ticket cyclists, then such improper summonses will inevitably be issued.

This officer's job isn't to keep you safe, it's to keep cars moving. Photo: Mike Spriggs via Flickr.

The NYPD’s decision to crack down on cyclists committing even the most minor infractions — while an epidemic of deadly driving continues unabated — should make it clear that the police department is no friend to those on two wheels right now. A report we received today from Christine Berthet, the co-founder of the Clinton/Hell’s Kitchen Coalition for Pedestrian Safety, offers evidence that the police aren’t too concerned about the safety of those on two legs either:

Today at 10:30 a.m., I was waiting to cross the street at the intersection of 42nd Street and 9th Avenue.

A large construction truck was barreling west on 42nd Street where the traffic was light. The pedestrian signal turned to “walk” on the south leg. Instead of stopping the truck, the agent waved it to turn south, which it did at high speed, while the pedestrian platoon had already engaged in the crossing. People jumped back to avoid a collision but it was very close.

I approached the agent and mentioned respectfully to him that he had waved a truck at full speed into a platoon of pedestriansand that pedestrians expected to be protected by the police, to which he responded: “My objective is the cars, not the people.”

This is far from an isolated instance, but still, to hear it so bluntly put and seeing it nearly kill five people in a deliberate way is shocking.

So this is what our society has come to: In New York City , the most pedestrian city in the United States, we pay the police to protect cars, not people.

As the NYPD continues its assault on bikers, it is important to highlight that they are doing a horrible job of protecting pedestrians. The car owners have successfully pitted pedestrians against bikes, we need to refocus the press and everyone on pedestrians/transit users against cars.

I’d love for Vacca and Vallone to have a hearing on that.

A drunk off-duty police officer slammed his car into a police vehicle in Park Slope three weeks ago. In the past two nights, two more off-duty cops crashed their vehicles while driving drunk. Photo: Joanna Oltman Smith

Drunk off-duty New York City police officers have crashed their vehicles each of the last two nights.

On Wednesday evening at around 6:20 p.m., the Daily News reported, officer Christine Mazarakes smashed her car at the corner of 81st Street and West End Avenue. Mazarakes, who is stationed at the Upper West Side’s 24th precinct, was charged with a DWI and suspended.

The following night, Detective Thomas Handley flipped his car over while driving on the BQE at around 11:30. His injuries were somehow only minor, according to the News, and like Mazarakes, he was charged with a DWI and suspended.

The pair of drunk-driving crashes caused by New York’s finest comes a few weeks after a similar crash on Brooklyn’s Fifth Avenue. On March 15, Officer Sergio Gonzalez was arrested for driving under the influence after crashing his car into the back of a cab, speeding away from the scene of a crash and then hitting a police car further down the street. Two hypodermic needles were found in Gonzalez’s car, according to the Park Slope Patch.

The Post reports that the jury has reached a mixed verdict in the trial of Patrick Pogan, the ex-NYPD officer who was seen by millions of YouTube viewers slamming his shoulder into approaching cyclist Christopher Long during a 2008 Critical Mass ride, sending Long to the pavement. Pogan was found guilty of falsifying records when he filed a criminal complaint alleging that Long assaulted him. He faces up to four years in prison for that conviction.

The jury found Pogan not guilty, however, of misdemeanor assault charges. Got that, NYPD? Go ahead and knock people off their bikes, just tell the truth about it afterward and you'll be okay.

Via Gothamist, here's the Time's Up video of police in the act of sawing bike locks on Houston Street last Thursday, in preparation for President Obama's motorcade. Gothamist reports that a lawsuit may be brewing over the massive seizure of bicycles, which police held at the 7th Precinct for owners who were lucky enough to know where to go and could find their property.

Yesterday police officials told the City Council that they just don't have the resources to open up life-saving street safety information to the public. But, from the looks of it, they still have sufficient manpower to put 10 or more officers on bicycle confiscation duty.

I'm referring to the report from the blog This is FYF that earlier today police broke the locks on hundreds of bicycles parked along Houston Street and tossed the bikes onto flatbed trucks:

Citing security concerns that bikes might be secret pipe bombs, NYPD officers broke the locks of hundreds of bikes along Houston Street this morning in preparation for President Obama's speech at Cooper Union. The bikes were unceremoniously put in the back of the truck. There was no prior notification of the bikes needing to be cleared along the route by NYPD and onlookers were not given information as to what would become of the bikes.

The ghost bike in memory of Constance Holden. Photo: WashCycle

Earlier this month, security at all costs helped take the life of veteran journalist Constance Holden, who atop her bicycle got in the way of an 11,000-pound truck driven by a National Guardsman in the security detail for the Washington, DC Nuclear Security Summit. (Note the three uses of "security" in that sentence.) Holden, an experienced urban cyclist not known for flouting authority, had just left her office at Science magazine on her homeward 3.5-mile bike commute when the truck struck and crushed her.

Here in Gotham, confusion and anxiety still linger in the wake of the off-again, on-again trial of 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and four confederates. The security arrangements worked up by the NYPD would have included 2,000 interlocking metal barriers around Foley Square, access restrictions on 17 lane-miles of surrounding streets, helicopter surveillance, and rooftop sharpshooters.

Police cut a bicycle on a Critical Mass route in 2005. Photo: Time's Up

We'll likely never know how, and at what level, the decision was made today to clip the bikes parked on Houston Street. Was there a pre-existing policy to remove all bicycles, no matter how spindly, from the route of a presidential motorcade? If so, was no thought given to posting no-parking signs and alerting cyclists via social media? Were alternative measures considered, such as use of bomb-sniffing dogs or explosives experts? Did someone report a “tip” about a bicycle bomb? If so, how thoroughly was it checked out?

These are the kinds of questions our City Council and Public Advocate should be asking... just as they should have, but didn't, ask police officials questions about the Critical Mass bike confiscations and the countermeasures planned for the KSM trial. Those disappeared bicycles belong to hundreds of New Yorkers who count on them to get to jobs, to schools, and to loved ones. Who will explain “security” to them? Who will be held to account to ensure that this inhumane practice isn't repeated?

Via Gothamist, local blog This is FYF posts this scene from Houston Street earlier today. Apparently, with President Obama due in town for a speech at Cooper Union, NYPD jumped at the chance to drastically overreact by confiscating New Yorkers' personal property. We haven't been able to confirm with the public information office yet, but This is FYF says police cited "security concerns that bikes might be secret pipe bombs" as their excuse:

NYPD officers clipped the locks of hundreds of bikes along Houston Street this morning in preparation for President Obama's speech at Cooper Union. The bikes were unceremoniously put in the back of the truck.  There was no prior notification of the bikes needing to be cleared along the route by NYPD and onlookers were not given information as to what would become of the bikes.

NYPD's penchant for equating bikes and cycling with security threats is, historically speaking, a recent development. If they were doing this stuff forty years ago, Governor Rockefeller might never have made it to his Earth Day speech in Prospect Park.

Rodney Seymour, after being doored and ticketed, and before having his bike stolen.

A fire truck and ambulance arrived first. The EMTs took Seymour's vitals, gave him an ice pack and suggested he wait for the police to arrive so he could make a report. An accident report is necessary in order to get the doorer to pay a victim's medical bills under New York's no-fault law, said Mark Taylor, Seymour's attorney.  

When an officer from the Ninth Precinct arrived on the scene, Seymour found him more interested in avoiding paperwork than helping an injured cyclist. "He got very upset because I was insisting on having a police report," said Seymour. He recalled the officer yelling, "You want a report? You want a report? I'll give you a report!" (The Ninth Precinct has not returned Streetsblog's requests for comment.)

The officer then walked back to his vehicle, Seymour said, returning ten minutes later with the report in hand. But that wasn't all. He'd also brought over two summonses.

The first was for riding a bike without a bell, which Seymour admits he lacked. The second cited Seymour for riding without reflectors on the wheel. According to Taylor, the law only requires reflectors on new bikes for sale. Seymour noted that his bright orange reflective vest and reflective helmet should have made him perfectly visible -- that and the fact that it was just before 10 a.m. 

While the dooring victim received two tickets, the driver didn't get a summons at all, Seymour said, just a "sorry for your inconvenience" from the officer. Even though dooring is against the law in New York state. The double standard rankled Seymour. "I thought New York was trying to transform people into riding bicycles," he said. The city's pro-bike policies will have trouble gaining momentum if invalid and trivial infractions, like riding without reflectors or a bell, get stricter enforcement from NYPD than potentially deadly actions like dooring.

After his encounter with police, Seymour's terrible morning took one more turn for the worse. When he got back from Beth Israel hospital to pick up his bike, which he had locked up before getting into the ambulance, it was gone -- stolen.

The officers who parked here apparently aren't the type to help old ladies cross the street. Photo: ddartley/Flickr

This time, the police stepped up their game, blocking the bus stop itself and forcing elderly passengers to disembark in the middle of the street. Since shame can't keep police from inconveniencing bus passengers, maybe a physically separated busway on 34th will do the trick.

More pics after the jump.

Eight squad cars lined up in front of Macy's...

...forcing buses to travel in rush hour traffic. Photos: ddartley/Flickr

Karen Schmeer, a friend of a dear friend, was killed on January 29 while carrying groceries home on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. She was killed by a speeding car filled with drug-shoplifting hoodlums fleeing the police. The impact knocked her out of her boots and flung her through the air, half a city block.

Let me be clear: the police did not kill Karen Schmeer. Criminals did. Let them rot. But their guilt does not absolve the police of responsibility.

Let me be clear: the police did not kill Karen Schmeer. Criminals did. Let them rot. But their guilt does not absolve the police of responsibility.

While it is the job of police to catch crooks, it’s not always their job to chase crooks. Not in cars. Cars are dangerous.

Police say they weren’t in pursuit at the time of the crash, but witnesses, according to the Daily News, “saw the car weaving in and out of traffic going north on Broadway with a squad car with lights and sirens blaring in hot pursuit.” Why the discrepancy? Because police should never be chasing suspects up Broadway at 8 p.m.

You don't need to pull the trigger to be guilty of murder. You don’t have to want to kill somebody. You do need to accept the likely consequences of your actions. This is what moral responsibility is about.

New York, like most cities, forbids car chases “whenever the risks to [police] and the public outweigh the danger to the community if the suspect is not immediately apprehended.” That’s pretty much all the time unless it’s Osama Bin Laden himself at the wheel.

Car chases aren’t worth it. They often end in some crash. And the pursued car does not have the emergency lights and sirens to warn people out of the way. The car that killed Karen didn't even have its headlights on.

The NYPD pursuit policy is based on the only effective way to reduce the danger of a car chase: don’t do it. For police, it's as simple as it is unsatisfying.

Police love a good chase, and there are informal rules to keep your supervisor from stopping the fun. Don’t “chase.” Instead, “follow.” Don’t get on the radio unless your voice is calm and your siren is off. When the suspects bail and run, the one you catch is the driver. If, God forbid, something really bad happens, say you lost contact before it happened.

We all know that driving is dangerous -- especially so for police -- and we all know people who have been hurt and killed in car crashes. When I was a rookie cop on the streets of Baltimore and driving too fast to some call, I was confronted by my partner: “Do you know anybody [out there]!? Would you cry if anybody died?!” My sergeant put it another way, “I think of my wife or children in a car. They may die. For what?” This was the wisdom of experience. The message was simple: slow down.

Still I couldn’t resist the thrill of the chase. I remember one fondly, on small empty city streets in the middle of the night. A guy with a van was speeding, ran a red light, and wouldn’t pull over. It ended OK. The guy bailed and didn’t crash. I caught him. Nobody got hurt. I had a blast.

Three months later, when the judge saw my suspect in court, he said, “I know you! You’re a drug dealer.”

Taken off guard, the young man replied meekly, “I used to be a drug dealer.” Then he requested a jury trial. When I talked to him later, he said, “That judge doesn’t like me. I used to deal, but I don’t play that no more.”

“Then why did you run?” I asked.

“I didn’t have a license... And I was little drunk.” He was also backing up five years of prison time. He got off with a $500 fine for a suspended license.

I didn’t need to chase that guy, but I did it for the thrill. When I look back, I count my lucky stars nobody was killed. I made a dangerous situation worse by going the wrong way down one-way streets and pushing another driver past his limits.

Had Karen Schmeer walked in front of the car I was pursuing that night and been killed, I would have tried to cover my ass with the exact words a NYPD spokesman used in this case: “Cops tried to pull over the suspects minutes before the crash, but they lost the car momentarily. When they caught up with the vehicle, it had already struck Schmeer, as well as several other vehicles.” Maybe that’s true.

But I’m at least willing to say I was wrong.

Karen Schmeer. Image: New York Times

The NYPD is no longer denying its involvement -- or error -- in the January 29 car chase that ended with the death of Karen Schmeer on the Upper West Side. At a meeting of the 24th Precinct's community council, Deputy Inspector Kathleen O'Reilly laid out the police's official line: that an officer improperly started a chase and that his supervisor, according to policy, called it off.

In response to a number of questions from concerned citizens at the meeting, Inspector O'Reilly clarified some of the details that have been missing so far. The chase began on the southbound side of Broadway, she said, while Schmeer was eventually killed on the northbound side (a fact that correlates with an account posted by a Streetsblog commenter). A call had gone out over the police radio with a description of a car fleeing the scene of a burglary. The offense was actually shoplifting; the original call was in error.

O'Reilly said that when an officer handing out traffic summonses on Broadway saw that car go by, he gave in to "the absolutely natural instinct to follow." O'Reilly did not deny that the officer began a vehicle pursuit.

According to O'Reilly, that pursuit never should have occurred. The NYPD Patrol Guide states, "Department policy requires that a vehicle pursuit be terminated whenever the risks to uniformed members of the service and the public outweigh the danger to the community if [the] suspect is not immediately apprehended."

O'Reilly gave her interpretation of the rule: "You'd have to have someone -- probably a cop -- shot right in front of you to pursue in Manhattan." Even then, she added, a pursuit probably isn't worth the danger it causes. "We've got ballistics. We've got evidence," she said. "We'll track them down."

O'Reilly also claimed that the chase was called off by the officer's supervisor once he realized what was happening. "Being trained, the sergeant realized the harm and called off the pursuit," she said. The harm was already done, however. Karen Schmeer is the only victim of a homicide in the 24th precinct this year, according to CompStat data [PDF].

There's still a lot that we don't know about Schmeer's death. Another Streetsblog commenter says she saw the police pursue the shoplifters until Schmeer was hit. If true, it sits uneasily with O'Reilly's claim that the chase was called off. No witnesses came forward at the meeting to offer accounts of the crash. O'Reilly also did not indicate whether the officer who began the pursuit was reprimanded for violating precinct policy.

What we do know is that a top officer in a police department which had previously denied that its pursuit contributed to Karen Schmeer's death, and denied involvement in other high-speed chases, has now admitted that an officer began a chase on the Upper West Side, violating protocol and putting citizens in danger.

When Jeff Geisinger biked through a red light on Atlantic Avenue last October, he knew that he might get a traffic ticket. So when a cop pulled him over, he wasn't surprised. He just didn't expect to be handed a summons for disorderly conduct, a criminal violation.

What Geisinger did wasn't legal and it wasn't the safest technique. Shortly after midnight on a Tuesday, he ran a red while biking north on Sixth Avenue in Brooklyn, at the intersection of Atlantic Avenue. "There was a stopped car to the right of me on Atlantic waiting to turn north," he said. "As the light turned red and I dashed through the intersection, the car slowly started to turn and I cut in front of it, with enough distance between the two of us for me to pass by safely." An officer saw the maneuver and pulled him over.

It's hard to imagine that what happened next would have happened to a motorist who did the same thing. Rather than write a traffic ticket, the officer issued Geisinger a summons for disorderly conduct.

While moving violations are non-criminal offenses, disorderly conduct is part of New York's penal code and carries a fine of up to $250 and up to 15 days in prison. It's something of a catch-all charge, probably by design, that can theoretically be invoked for "threatening behavior," making "unreasonable noise," using "abusive language" in public, or obstructing traffic, among other things.

Geisinger says that he didn't give the officer a hard time or make a scene, making much of the statute inapplicable to his situation, but not necessarily all of it. (The 77th Precinct has not returned Streetsblog's requests for comment.)

"It sounds strange to be charged with disorderly conduct for a moving violation," said Adam White, an attorney who has represented cyclists for more than 10 years. White cited a 2006 court case which determined that improper conduct must be "reinforced by a culpable mental state to create a public disturbance." If Geisinger wasn't intentionally trying to cause trouble, he probably shouldn't have been charged with disorderly conduct. White concluded that "the police officer did not have a reasonable basis for charging the cyclist" with disorderly conduct.

He added that the relevant question is how the law normally gets interpreted and applied. On that score, it's worth mentioning that Gus Gonzalez, the driver whom a witness saw intentionally knock a cyclist to the pavement on Ninth Avenue, causing severe bruising, is now facing a disorderly conduct charge as well.

We'll never know for certain if the charge would have held up in the city's justice system. In December, Geisinger went to court, pled not guilty and had his case dismissed when the cop didn't show up. He regrets being denied his day in court. "I wish I could have at least gotten in a sentence or two to state my case," Geisinger said, "but I silently accepted the dismissal and went home."

The debut Streetfilms Shortie caught an errant scooter blocking a bike lane. This time it's New York's Finest, camped out in the Manhattan Bridge bike path at Canal and Chrystie.

A half-step forward, two steps back.

May's Bike Month Critical Mass reportedly drew more participants than usual, and NYPD responded by handing out a passel of trumped-up summonses. No surprise there, but as this video (from glassbeadian via Gothamist) shows, officers on scooters went so far as to follow riders down the Hudson River Greenway.

Barbara Ross of Time's Up thinks police may have been acting in retaliation to recent movement on the long-standing Five Borough Bike Club lawsuit to overturn the parade permit requirement for bike rides of 50 or more cyclists. Check the Gothamist post for another vid that features scooter cops picking out which cyclists to harass.

Manhattan Avenue minutes after the deadly crash. (Image: Greenpoint Gazette)

The NYPD continues to dispute eyewitness accounts of the events that preceded the vehicle-on-pedestrian collision that took the life of Violetta Kryzak, a 38-year-old mother and Greenpoint resident.

Despite the statements of three separate eyewitnesses stationed several blocks from one another who claim that at least one police vehicle was following the speeding white mini-van that struck and killed Kryzak, the 94th Precinct’s commanding officer maintains that a police pursuit did not occur.

At a precinct community council meeting last week, Deputy Inspector Dennis Fulton said that he can only go on what witnesses say, but that he has "no indication that [a police-pursuit] happened."

Streetsblog contacted the NYPD's Public Information Office for clarification about the contradiction between eyewitness accounts of the day’s events and Deputy Inspector Fulton’s understanding of what occurred. "Everybody’s going to say something," said a spokesperson.

The family of Violetta Kryzak has secured legal representation. A private investigator hired by the family’s lawyers is conducting interviews and searching for surveillance cameras that may have caught the alleged chase on tape.

The NYPD’s Internal Affairs Bureau also has an investigation underway, said Fulton.

"Have placard-bearing drivers begun their own reclaiming of reclaimed public space?"

That is the question posed by Streetsblogger ddartley, who last week snapped these photos of a city government vehicle parked in the new Madison Square pedestrian plaza. He got just close enough to spot the placard behind the windshield when:

This guy wearing some sort of NYPD uniform showed up and got in and drove off. Okay, it's not like he was committing murder or anything, but every time a cop breaks a law for all to see, it's just a little more poison in the world. This suggests that even after these fancy new pedestrian-only plazas have been built, they are under threat from being parked on by placard-bearing NYC employees who remain, at least as far as parking, 100% completely above the law. Well, for now!

It's surprising, really, that it's taken this long for such behavior to come to light. What can, or what should, DOT do to nip it in the bud?

Off-duty police officers have been using the Pelham Bay Park walking/running trails in order to avoid traffic. They barrel through the park at a high rate of speed. Twice I was almost run over while jogging, and once I was cursed at when I put my hands up. My friend asked a Parks Dept. employee about it. She told us that they were off-duty cops and that there was nothing that they could do about it. Couldn't they install bollards or something?

Streetsblog has a message in with NYPD. The Parks Department had no comment.

Anyone else witnessed this?

Photo: E. Kuzina/Flickr

This just in from T.A.: 

I just received a call from a very angry member informing me that there are three groups of cops at the Manhattan exit of the Williamsburg Bridge who are pulling over and summonsing every cyclist exiting the bridge. If anyone happens to be headed that direction a) be careful and b) try and grab an image. According to the member, they’ve got cyclists waiting in lines to receive their summonses.