Citywide bust nets more than 30 dirt bikes, ATVs from Philadelphia streets

Nearly three dozen dirt bikes and all-terrain vehicles -- plus an illegal gun found on one of the bikes' riders -- were off the streets of Philadelphia Sunday night after a daylong citywide sting aimed at confiscating the illegal vehicles.

By 7 p.m., 34 dirt bikes and ATVs had been confiscated throughout the city -- part of a regular initiative run by Chief Inspector Dennis Wilson, who oversees the city's Regional Operations Command, specially detailed district officers and the Major Crimes Unit to get the bikes and four-wheelers off the city's streets.

"Today's operation was really successful. We're still at it," Wilson said at the Major Crimes Auto Squad headquarters, at Whitaker Avenue and Macalester Street in Juniata Park.

Plainclothes cops, with an assist from Aviation Unit officers tracking dirt bikes and ATVs from a helicopter above, tracked down the illegal riders around the city. In addition to seizing the bikes and ATVs, police arrested two men -- one for riding a stolen dirt bike and another for carrying a gun illegally while also riding a stolen dirt bike, Wilson said.

The illegal vehicles that often plague neighborhoods throughout the city on weekends and in the warmer months grabbed headlines last week when Kyrell Tyler, an up-and-coming dirt biker, was laid to rest after being shot to death in Southwest Philadelphia. Bikers and ATV riders came out by the hundreds for Tyler's funeral at Broad and Fitzwater streets and took the streets in packs after the funeral. Wilson said Sunday's roundup of the vehicles was not a response to last week's dirt bike ride, however.

"We've done this routinely for the last couple years," he said. In 2013, he added, the north dirt-bike and ATV detail run by 24th District Lt. Marc Hayes seized 313 bikes and ATVs total. This year, Wilson said, the detail is up to more than 100 seizures -- not counting several made by a similar detail in the south police divisions.

Wilson, Hayes and Major Crimes Det. Jack Logan, who regularly work the stings, said they couldn't provide specific details on exactly how they track down the bikes and four-wheelers, but that police don't chase them.

"They're very reckless. They're riding on sidewalks, they're cutting vehicles [off]. It's definitely a public-safety hazard, and that's one of the reasons we can't chase them," Wilson said. "If we do attempt to chase them, they're gonna take off, and they don't have lights on a lot of the vehicles."

Police said roughly 1,000 ATVs and dirt bikes seized as part of the initiative, which has been going on about two years now, are in the police impound lot in South Philadelphia. Because of a city ordinance banning the bikes and four-wheelers, once they're confiscated, owners can't get them back, police said -- even if they purchased them legally.