NYPD Sources: Moped Chain-Snatching Crews, Some Tied to a Dominican Gang, Hit New Yorkers Over 20 Times Since September
The New York Post reports at least 10 of the robberies turned violent, including the stabbing of an NYPD detective. Officers say sanctuary rules bar them from working with ICE and judges release suspects quickly.
Two-person crews on scooters and e-bikes are ripping gold chains off people's necks across New York City, and police sources say the problem is much bigger than the official count.
According to the New York Post's exclusive, the NYPD counts more than 20 motorized-bike chain snatchings since September, at least 10 of them violent. One officer, who spoke anonymously, told the paper "there are hundreds of chain snatchings around the city." He tied much of it to the Trinitarios, a gang founded by Dominican inmates at Rikers Island in the early 1990s. That link comes from the unnamed officer, not from a police statement.
The cases the Post describes:
The detective. NYPD Detective Jose Mercedes, 33, was stabbed 10 times on Oct. 2 in the Bronx while trying to keep a necklace his mother gave him, the Post says. He told reporters he identified himself as a detective in English and Spanish and "they didn't care." Police named the accused as D'Angelo Caraballo, 25, and Sneider Mejia, 24. The Post calls them illegal migrants. Some earlier reports put the number of stab wounds at seven, so the count differs by outlet.
The father. Jorge Beltre, 30, was walking his 5-year-old son home on Oct. 8 when two scooter riders attacked him. A knife wound to his leg took five stitches. With help from eight onlookers he held one attacker, a 17-year-old, until police came. Beltre says the Bronx District Attorney's Office told him the teen was released on $900 bail. "Why did they let him go?" he told the Post in Spanish. The DA's office did not respond to the paper.
Other attacks. A 60-year-old man was punched and robbed of about $8,000 in jewelry at gunpoint on Sept. 28. An off-duty female officer had a necklace taken in Brooklyn on Oct. 10.
The sanctuary claim. An officer told the Post that because New York is a sanctuary city, "we're not allowed to confer with ICE so we just arrest them," and that suspects get released on their own recognizance "and they go back and do it again." That is one officer's account. The Post's article does not include a response from city officials in the portions we read.
A note on our reading: the page was only partly available to us, so details further down the story are not reflected here. The immigration-status descriptions come from the Post and its police sources.