Cyclists Ticketed At Intersection Where Boy Was Killed: Report

SUNSET PARK, BROOKLYN — The NYPD has been ticketing cyclists at the intersection where a 14-year-old delivery boy was killed by a driver over the weekend, according to a report.

Streetsblog reports that officers were seen slapping bikers with tickets near Fifth Avenue and 23rd Street on Tuesday and Wednesday morning. Edwin Ajacalon, a Guatemalan immigrant delivering food to provide for his family back home, was hit and killed at that intersection on Saturday night.

Joelle Schindler, who rides her bike to work from her Park Slope home, told the website that she didn't stop to see what the cyclists were being ticketed for but noticed it two days in a row following Ajacalon's death.

The intersection now includes a white "ghost bike" placed there following a vigil on Monday night.

"That ghost bike is now on my commute to work, which is really heartbreaking," Schindler told Streetsblog.

Read the full story from Streetsblog here.

The enforcement action follows a similar pattern in the wake of a cyclist death, where officers focus on other bike-riders and not the cars that kill them, activists say.

"There is not a shred of evidence to support the efficacy of these ticket blitzes," Paul White, executive director of Transit Alternatives, told Patch in an email.

"The data we do have is very clear: deterring vehicular speeding is the most effective way to prevent future deaths. By diverting limited enforcement resources to cyclist crackdowns, they are letting speeding motorists get away with murder while reinforcing their own stubborn canard that cyclists always have it coming."

Security camera footage posted by the New York Daily News shows that Ajacalon may have been crossing Fifth Avenue against the traffic light. But the driver that struck and killed the boy also appears to be traveling much faster than the others around him.

Authorities should instead focus their enforcement on speeding vehicles, who pose a much bigger threat to street safety than someone on a bicycle, White said.

"It is a disturbing part of the the NYPD's victim-blaming culture, and it has to stop," White said. "Often the NYPD will not even ticket drivers whose reckless driving causes so many of these tragic deaths, yet there they are, the next day, unleashing ticket blitzes on bicyclists while drivers speed on by."

Image: Fifth Avenue and 23rd Street, via Google Streetview