Dozens of New Yorkers are adjudicating bike summonses under a crackdown the mayor said he would end
The Crackdown the Mayor Promised to Stop
On the 16th floor of the Municipal Building in lower Manhattan, cyclists have been arriving in Criminal Court to answer for moving violations that — in every other major American city — would be handled with a traffic ticket payable online. The criminal summons policy was put in place by Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch at the direction of then-Mayor Eric Adams in the spring of 2025. Adams is gone. Mamdani is now mayor. But the criminal summons policy continues, and Tisch — who Mamdani chose to keep in her role — has shown no sign of ending it. During his campaign, Mamdani was explicit: cyclists “should not be facing a criminal summons.” He said he would end the policy. He has not.
What Is Happening in Court
On a recent Monday, according to Streetsblog NYC, Criminal Court Judge John Walsh dismissed most of roughly three dozen summonses brought before him — either because of insufficient details in the NYPD-issued tickets, errors in the paperwork, or simple warnings. That pattern of dismissals is consistent with what courts have seen since the crackdown began: a policy that the NYPD is enforcing aggressively but that courts are not sustaining. The result is a system that creates enormous hardship for cyclists and delivery workers — who must miss work, hire lawyers, and navigate the criminal court system — while producing almost no actual convictions.
The Stakes for Delivery Workers
The crackdown falls disproportionately on e-bike delivery workers, many of whom are immigrants. Aboubacar Ki, a delivery worker who attended a Ramadan Iftar meal with the mayor in March, told Streetsblog: “I don’t think criminal summonses against cyclists is a good idea. Most of us are immigrants with cases at immigration court. If you keep getting those kind of criminal summonses, it may affect your ability to be able to get your papers in this country. We are living in this city, helping moving this city, we shouldn’t get criminal summonses.” The intersection of immigration enforcement and criminal cycling summonses creates a particular vulnerability for undocumented delivery workers, who cannot afford any criminal record.
Why the Policy Continues
The administration has not publicly explained why it has maintained the criminal summons policy despite the mayor’s campaign commitments. City Hall spokesman Sam Raskin has said the mayor’s view is that cyclists “should not be facing a criminal summons,” but the policy has continued regardless. Peter Beadle, a Queens-based lawyer and cycling advocate who appeared in court on the day Streetsblog observed the proceedings, offered a blunt analysis: “Drivers are responsible for several orders of magnitude more injuries and death than cyclists and e-bike riders. It’s not about safety, it’s about punishment.” He called on Mamdani to “go beyond the evidence-free politics of his predecessor’s campaign against vulnerable road users.” Transportation Alternatives has documented the asymmetry in NYPD enforcement: drivers who kill pedestrians routinely face no criminal charges, while cyclists who run red lights are prosecuted. That asymmetry represents, advocates say, a fundamental statement about whose safety the city values. The Thursday morning headlines at Streetsblog NYC on March 5 captured the contradiction neatly, calling it “Mamdani’s Criminal Crackdown on Cyclists Edition.”
