Outlaw Dirt Bikers On The Radar

A light breeze was blowing. The sun was shining down from a blameless sky. It was a beautiful day — the kind that makes Vincent Anastasio nervous.

“I get a little uncomfortable” when the weather is this good, Anastasio, a police sergeant and East Shore’s top cop, said Thursday afternoon. ​“I’m waiting for the calls to come in.”

The calls are from angry neighbors tormented by the noise and smell and danger of dirt bikes and ATV ​“quads” tearing down their streets. Sgt. Anastasio starts getting those calls around this time of year, as the weather gets warmer.

Sgt. Anthony Zona, Fair Haven’s top cop, gets the calls too. The two cops are now teaming up to try to send a message back to the neighborhoods they work in: We need your help.

With two dirt-bike accidents in two days this week, Sgts. Anastasio and Zona are looking for tips on where dirt-bikers are hiding their illegal ATVs when they’re not riding them. It’s too dangerous to try to chase the bikes when they zip by on the street, so police are looking to catch them when they’re standing still, wherever it is that people garage them at night.

It’s illegal to ride a dirt bike anywhere in New Haven if it’s unregistered or the driver doesn’t have a license. And most dirt bikes aren’t street legal even if they’re registered.

Sgts. Anastasio and Zona met at the East Shore police substation on Woodward Avenue Thursday afternoon to talk about the problem.

“It’s a quality of life problem,” Anastasio said. Dirt bikers are endangering themselves and others, and destroying parks and private property, he said.

They’ve been tearing up Bishop Woods Bird Sanctuary, where they’ve basically installed a track, Anastasio said. Bikers also often hit Clinton Street Park in Fair Haven, and kids do wheelies down Grand Avenue, Zona (pictured) said. It’s a citywide problem, but the Fair Haven and the East Shore cops receive the most complaints.

“It’s getting reckless. It’s getting dangerous,” Sgt. Anastasio said. Just the day before, a kid on a dirt bike slammed into a brand new car carrying a 2- and 5‑year-old in the backseat, he said.

That accident happened at Clifton and Russel Streets at about 2:30 p.m. on Wednesday. A dirt biker spotted a cop, sped up to get away, and winded up crashing into a car. The bike went sliding across the intersection, where it came to rest in front of an apartment building, leaking gas. The rider, who may have broken his wrist, took off running. Cops were able to catch him a short distance away and arrest him.

The woman driving the car was ​“very shaken up” by the fact the biker had hit her car while her young kids were in the back, Anastasio said. ​“It’s an emotional thing.”

Unfortunately, her car was only two weeks old, and uninsured, he said.

The day before, on Tuesday at about 7:30 p.m., a dirt biker caused an accident at Lloyd and Exchange streets in Fair Haven, Zona said. He was going the wrong way down Exchange Street, where a cop car was. The cop saw him, turned on the cruiser’s lights, then ended up swerving into a civilian car. The biker got away.

And three weeks ago a kid fleeing cops on his dirt bike ran over a 7‑year-old girl standing with her father at a bus stop. (Read about that here.)

“We’re at a dead end here, and we need the community’s input,” Anastasio said.

Cops can’t chase the bikers, that’s just going to end up with somebody hurt, the sergeants said. ​“It’s dangerous to chase them,” Zona said.

Most of the dirt bikers are between 13 and 21, Zona said. They live in the neighborhoods. People must see them rolling their illegal bikes into backyard or garages.

“Who are they? Who are the kids?” Zona said. ​“People know who they are.”

He asked people to call him or Anastasio anonymously with information that might help them confiscate the bikes.

“There needs to be more parental guidance,” Anastasio said. Parents must know their kids have dirt bikes, and that they’re illegal. They should talk get rid of the bikes or talk to the cops.

In the meantime, the sergeants are getting bikes anyway they can. A tip to a Craigslist sale recently led his cops to a stolen bike in a backyard on James Street, Zona said. Walking beat cops in both neighborhoods are peeking in yards, looking for bikes.

He said his cops have picked up eight bikes since the weather got warm. Anastasio said his cops have picked up about four.

In one case, Anastasio got the biker but not the bike, eventually. On March 8, Anastasio managed to box a dirt biker in on Rt. 80. He jumped out and grabbed the guy, then looked up and saw a bank robbery in progress at the TD Bank nearby. He had to let the guy go.

“He wheelies away from me as I’m running to the bank,” Anastasio said.

But he had recognized the guy, and told his cops to look out for him. Two weeks ago, they spotted him near the corner of Rt. 80 and Eastern Street. They didn’t get the bike, but they gave the guy a ticket.

Zona said the other day he was outside the Fair Haven police substation on Blatchley Avenue when a pick-up truck went by with a dirt bike in the back. He asked the driver to pull over. The guy said he’d bought it for $400 for his son two days prior, but he had no paperwork for the bike, and when Zona ran the VIN, it came back stolen out of North Branford. Zona confiscated it.

“Eventually that bike would have ended up on the road,” Zona said.

On Thursday afternoon he and Anastasio hit the road themselves to point out some dirt-biking hot spots.

With Zona behind the wheel, they headed to the Eastview Village housing projects on Eastern Street, where Anastasio pointed out the dirt trails climbing a hill in the back into the woods near the Ailing Memorial Golf Course.

They then drove to Roosevelt Street, a road off of Foxon Hill Road that dead-ends into the Bishop Woods bird sanctuary. They climbed out at the end and walked past a sign reading ​“No Motorized Vehicles.”

“This is the track right here,” Anastasio said. But dirt bikers tearing up that track are not the main problem. ​“To get here is the issue.”

Dirt bikers drive through city streets to arrive at the sanctuary, breaking traffic and motor vehicle laws and endangering people along the way.

Driving back down Quinnipiac Avenue, the cops spotted a group of guys wheeling what looked like a miniature Harley-Davidson bike down the sidewalk.

Zona pulled the car over. ​“Who’s that belong to, brother?” he said to the guy wheeling the bike, who stopped while his friends kept walking.

On the sidewalk, the guy, with tattoos on his hands and wearing a gray hoody and jeans, said he was wheeling the bike to the gas station at the corner to fill it up. He said he’d just turned 20 the day before and had gotten the bike recently from ​“my boy.”

“Whooah! Dirt bike!” said a young boy on a nearby lawn. Turned out it wasn’t a dirt bike at all, but a ​“mini-bike” — also illegal.

“Obviously this is smaller caliber,” Anastasio said. Still, the process is the same as for a dirt bike. ​“We stop. We educate.”

Zona called two other cops, Officers John Kaczor and Alex Morgillo, to take over the situation.

As they pulled away from the scene, Anastasio said the cops would confiscate the bike from the guy. ​“He can’t prove that he owns it.”

The pair headed to Clinton Park in Fair Haven, where lacrosse practice was underway but no dirt bikers were in sight, despite the beautiful weather.

That might be a sign the crackdown on dirt bikes is working, Zona said. ​“We’ve really been hot and heavy on this.”