David DelValle and his buddies planned to roar into the Freddie Fixer Parade on their dirt bikes.
Then they ran into Lt. Leo Bombalicki.
DelValle (pictured) and three friends were arrested Sunday afternoon as they unloaded off-road vehicles onto a quiet corner of the Beaver Hill neighborhood. Acting on a neighbor’s tip, Bombalicki swooped in with a half-dozen cop cars, seizing six vehicles and leaving four guys from Harlem in handcuffs.
Speaking after the cops cleared out, DelValle said he didn’t intend to break any laws.
“We came to ride in the parade,” explained DelValle, referring to the annual Freddie Fixer march.
“Somebody told us it was a motorcycle parade.”
DelValle, who’s 32, said he drove up to New Haven Sunday afternoon with 12 of his friends, all from Harlem. They piled dirt bikes and all-terrain vehicles into a Budget rental truck and hit the highway.
Shortly before 5 p.m., they gathered at the corner of Winthrop Avenue and Glen Road, a leafy intersection not far from Hillhouse High School. They started unpacking the truck. (Clarification: Cops said they started riding up and down the street, too.)
Someone from a local block watch spotted them.
The neighbor knew just which digits to dial — the cell phone number of Lt. Bombalicki, who supervises a squad that targets illegal ATV use in New Haven. (Click here to read a story following Bombalicki on another recent bust.)
Bombalicki sprang to action. He and Lt. Ray Hassett gathered a half-dozen squad cars and surrounded the corner.
When the cops closed in, most of the bikers tried to flee. Some sped away. Others ditched their bikes and ran on foot. Three were arrested on the spot; one was caught on Norton Parkway near Whalley Avenue as he tried to escape, according to Bombalicki.
Cops seized two quads and four dirt bikes, one of which appeared to be stolen, he said. As he spoke, Lombard towing was hauling away a red Honda dirt bike. Another towing hook snared the bikers’ Budget rental truck, which Bombalicki said was parked illegally.
DelValle estimated nine of his 12 friends got away.
While his buddies ran, he didn’t.
“I didn’t do nothing,” he explained. “All I did was take my bike off the truck.”
Cops told him to hit the ground and put his hands behind his head. They told him he was going to jail, according to DelValle.
After sitting on the curb in handcuffs for a while, DelValle was given a $75 ticket for operating a vehicle without a license. He was then released.
Bombalicki said he suspected the riders were setting up for a drag race.
“They came here because they [heard] it was legal to ride their bikes” in New Haven, said the lieutenant. “I beg to differ with their opinion on that.”
As he drove away from the scene, Beaver Hill Alderman Moti Sandman heralded the bust as an example of community policing.
Bombalicki commended the neighbor who called him for helping cops stop a few of the many riders menacing the city with illegal, loud ATVs that day. Earlier that day, Hassett pursued, but lost, a group of law-flouting ATV riders on Whalley Avenue. He believed the group was the same one they ended up catching — a charge DelValle later denied.
Even as the two lieutenants spoke, the sound of racing motors pierced the air.
“Do you hear what I hear?” asked Bombalicki, his ear to the wind.
DelValle denied that his group was preparing to drag race. He said he’d never been to New Haven before, so he wouldn’t know anyone to drag race with. He said that his group just wanted to ride along with the Freddie Fixer Parade. He said he wasn’t aware that, at the time they were stopped unpacking their truck, the parade was long over.
“Somebody told me it was an all-day thing,” open to all vehicles, he explained.
“We learned the hard way,” said DelValle, walking away with his helmet in his hands. “We’re not wanted in this part of town.”