BUFFALO, N.Y. — It was sunny and warm Sunday along Skillen Street in Buffalo’s Riverside neighborhood.
Retired paramedic Jay Downey and his wife were out walking and happily chatting with neighbors. Then they returned home and Downey said, “I just sat down to have a snack in the kitchen, and I heard the uproar.”
Security cameras on Downey’s home captured the loud and fast procession of ATVs, dirt bikes, and motorcycles roaring down his street. In all, 51 rumbled by. There were also cars traveling with the riders. A couple cars rolled down the wrong lane to be side-by-side with the bikers blocking the street.
Video shows one passenger car that came to a stop to avoid an ATV motoring in the wrong lane.
Downey calls them “mob racers,” and he says it’s only a matter of time before someone is hurt badly. “I’m waiting for someone to get killed. I really am,” he said.
Last summer in Niagara Falls, an ATV rider was killed in a wreck. In Buffalo last year, a pair of city cops on bicycle patrol where injured when an ATV hit them both.
Buffalo Police Captain Jeffrey Rinaldo says this illegal activity really revved up during the coronavirus pandemic. With fewer vehicles on the road, the ATV and dirt bike riders got bolder traveling on streets, trails, and through city parks.
“Every district in the city, there’s been reports and complains about people riding ATVs, dirt bikes aggressively through city streets,” Rinaldo said.
North District Common Council Member Joseph Golombek says recently he had a too-close encounter with a swarm of street racers.
“This past week, I was driving down Tonawanda street, and I had 20 or 30 of them that were driving, heading toward me. Some were in my lane,” Golombek said.
Golombek says he was nearly forced to stop in his lane to avoid a head-on collision.
Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown on Friday announced a reward program: $100 is being offered for anyone with information that results in the apprehension of a rider and the confiscation of their ATV or dirt bike.
Asked about the modest reward, the mayor explained, “We think that a nudge is enough to get people to report. There’s great anger all over the community about the operation of ATVs and dirt bikes.”
The Buffalo Police Department will be getting assistance for this problem from above. The department says the Erie County Sheriff Department will add its helicopter to the effort of trying to track down Buffalo’s street racers.