Glen Cove police to bolster enforcement with electric vehicle safety in mind

The Glen Cove Police Department plans to ramp up its enforcement of illegal electric vehicles that officials say are dangerous to motorists and pedestrians.

Glen Cove Police Chief William Whitton said the department, a force of 58 officers, will undergo training next month to better understand laws surrounding the battery-powered bikes, electric motorcycles and e-scooters.

The department plans to use unmarked vehicles and plainclothes officers to step up its ongoing efforts to curb the presence of the machines, he said, which are sometimes driven recklessly by children and can reach speeds in excess of 40 mph.

“I’m not trying to be draconian here,” Whitton said in a phone interview. “The bottom line here for us: It’s really safety driven. … They’re being extremely risky in their behavior, and we’d be remiss not to do something about this.”

Daniel Flanzig, a Mineola-based attorney and the president of the board of directors of the New York Bicycling Coalition, will be leading the training of Glen Cove’s police officers. Flanzig said he’s led similar trainings in Long Beach, Lynbrook and Hempstead, where he breaks down the differences between e-bikes and electric motorcycles and the laws that currently govern their use.

Those laws can be murky, Newsday reported.

E-bikes, which are separated into Class 1, Class 2 and Class 3, need to follow most standard biking guidelines but aren’t allowed everywhere that regular bikes can go, with Class 3 bikes — the fastest of the three classifications — not allowed outside New York City. E-bikes must have a manufacturer’s label indicating the bike’s classification, Newsday previously reported.

There is a separate three-tier classification system for limited-use motorcycles, commonly known as mopeds. Those vehicles can be electric and need to be registered and operated by a licensed person.

However, the electric motorcycles raising concerns among law enforcement officials are manufactured without VIN numbers and don't fit into legal classifications, Flanzig said. Additionally, the operators of the vehicles are often unlicensed, he said.

E-scooters are legal on most streets and highways with speed limits of 30 mph but can only go a maximum of 15 mph, according to state law.

Electric minibikes, dirt bikes and golf carts are illegal to drive on state roads.

“The bottom line is, those devices that are not Class 1, 2, 3 e-bikes or defined as an e-scooter, they are prohibited on state roads,” Flanzig said.

In one incident earlier this summer, Whitton said, a teenager "darted out from a parking lot" while riding an e-bike on Forest Avenue in Glen Cove and was struck by a car. The teenager was thrown from the bike and lost teeth.

Whitton said he hopes the step up in the department’s enforcement plans will educate parents who buy the vehicles in the first place.

“They give them these e-bikes not realizing just how fast they are, how dangerous they can be,” Whitton said.

Police can issue individuals a traffic summons for riding the vehicles and also impound them, forcing an adult to go to the department and pay an administrative fee to retrieve them, Whitton said.

Glen Cove Mayor Pamela Panzenbeck said she’s witnessed children pulling wheelies down the entire length of a street on illegal electric vehicles.

“It’s dangerous to the people riding these bikes and it’s dangerous to pedestrians,” Panzenbeck said in a phone interview. “Hopefully we’ll get some results from this.”