Cyclists Being Assaulted, Robbed In Oakland
The local EBBC email list has some folks talking about their encounters with kids trying, and sometimes succeeding, in knocking them off their bikes - and sometimes robbing them. According to victims, sometimes it seems like the kids are doing it just for fun.
I have no idea if this is regular, ongoing criminality, or just a temporary spike, but we should make sure everyone knows about the situation.
One location that seems to be prone to this type of crime is Mandela Parkway - with cyclists heading to or from the West Oakland BART station (map):
Mandela Parkway is pretty darn nice-looking - I rode it a few weeks ago - but it’s also totally deserted - or so it seemed to me on my afternoon ride. For long stretches, there is just absolutely nothing there along the road but some residential housing and industrial-type areas. There are no corner stores or other places where kids like to hang out. If you are riding by there and kids are hanging around the side of the road, or sitting in the nicely-landscaped median, you should think about turning around, booking, calling the cops, getting ready to yell for help, getting ready to fight, or getting ready to get knocked off your bike and/or robbed.
Here is more info on an incident that happened a couple of weeks ago (map of location).
I’m not sure what can be done about this crazy situation. Would a simple increase in policing do anything? Undercover ‘decoy’ bicycle cops? Cameras in those areas which seem to be most isolated? More street lighting? Something else?
One person reported that they were attacked even though they were riding with a friend.
This ‘personal security’ aspect of bicycling is another reason why we have to have full bicycle infrastructure on the main, busiest travel corridors of the city — they may be safer than isolated stretches of bike paths or low-traffic streets.
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