There were two WCN legal observers out for the April Critical Mass ride, Caroline S. and Olaf B.

The report below was submitted by Caroline S.

DCPI (cops) said 11 tickets to one reporter - but we heard reports that indicated at least 35-60; only 1 arrest. I am told it was for blocking an intersection. Most of the tickets were for not staying to the left or right of the street.

Cyclists reported that a cop told them that they all sat down with a lawyer the night before cm to be schooled on the 'laws.' apparently, the lawyer told the cops that they should ticket for not being in the bike lane (or to the right or left)---which they did.

Most of the ride biked to over to the Manhattan Bridge at the end of the ride. At one point we were all leaving Washington Square, where all of the police had gathered and surrounded us. Everyone was walking their bikes on the sidewalk out of the park, wrong way on a one way street. Trying to lose the crew of scooters. Sure enough, they followed us in procession, wrong way down the street. People heard some of them shout, 20 more minutes at around 9:10pm. We assume that refers to the fact that they had 20 more minutes to follow us before their shifts ended. As we got to the Manhattan Bridge the entire scooter patrol--Turco leading--zoomed up to the entrance from a different direction than we did and sat there...in what looked like revving their engines attack mode--just waiting for us to go.

There were moments in the ride when there were no cops. For the first time in a while. It was nice. They would swoop in on the major cross streets, like 23rd and pick off the people waiting at red lights to give them tickets for not riding to the side. I guess this is their strategy to get some of the riders deciding to not run reds. Many were running reds, but as usual, the scooters have a hard time dealing with catching those bikers.

Olaf collected these details: Near 40th and 8th Ave: As far as I could ascertain, all were getting summons for either "failure to keep left" or "failure to keep right". Officer Caroli, rank unknown seemed to be supervising.

Names of ticketed riders, followed (when available) by the name of the ticketing officer:

Dan Winetsky, Officer Lee badge 6978
Dan Birn, Officer Diaz
Oksana Mironova, Officer Donnel
Sasha Wortzel
Ken Yip
Evan Freirich (attorney and former prosecutor)\\