Last night on my way home from work (about 10:30 pm) I was attacked on the LRT trail between 24th St. S and 26th St. S. I think there were three men/boys of indeterminate race or age who sprayed me with pepper spray and tackled me off my bike. They demanded money, but I told them I didn't have any. Then they ran off. I am mostly uninjured, but I cracked my helmet and have a very sore neck and hip. They didn't try to take my bag or my bike, but I did lose my brand new Lights and Motion Vega light.

A cyclist, whose name I can't remember, but maybe it was Alex, came to my aid and called the cops and a couple of pedestrians helped me wash out my eyes. I am very appreciative to all of those people.

Be careful out there, everybody!

I sure hope you are doing okay.

My husband was attacked Friday evening, too (see the report in the Bicycle Advocacy section) -- on the Greenway near Garfield. It was two attackers at about 7:15 p.m., with the usual trick of one blocking the trail and the other jumping at the bike from the side.

We need some effective way to stop these attacks. (No, not shooting every drunk who stumbles across the bike lane.)

Would it be technically-feasible to monitor the Greenway with hidden visible-light and infrared cameras posted in trail hot-spots? Cops on light duty or citizen volunteers could monitor them for suspicious activity, and bike cop sting teams could ride out and arrest anyone who tried to attack them. They could have it all on video, rather than relying on identification by traumatized cyclists, so it would be easy to get a conviction.

Sure, it would cost money, but Greenway crime is costing us, too. If we could bike the Greenway at night, we could get rid of a car. We wouldn't be paying for gas and parking for the half of the year when the trail is dark by 6 p.m. We'd also be saving costs for the environment and road maintenance.

Probably about as feasible as getting the defense dept to let us use an infrared spy satellite to do the same thing, unfourtunatly.


Slow, I'm really sorry to hear about this, glad you're mostly OK, though.

I, too am sorry to hear about your misfortune, and glad you were not hurt worse!

That's incredibly scary. I bike that section daily. Almost always at night as well...

man, i hate to see news like this. i'm also sorry this had to happen to you. i'll say it again though, whenever i see shady people dawdling along i always ramp up the speed. get out of the saddle and charge them. no one in their conscious mind would tackle 200+ lbs of person/steel traveling over 20mph unless they want to get floored. if you're really good you can pull out your knife while doing this and leave it behind with them. in their spine.

OMG Slow that is HORRIBLE!

Damn damn damn.

Glad you came out of it OK, albeit shook up.

Rdrey, can't say I would have the wherewithal to go
on the offensive like that, and I am guessing most people
wouldn't either. Much easier to say what you would do
after the fact.

Again, glad you are OK slow.

I'm so sorry to hear this, Slow. That is scary shit.
Glad that you made it out relatively unscathed,
and that others came to your aid quickly. Fark.

I say it's hard to judge who is shady and who is not-
even groups of peds at night may or may not be.

I don't believe there is a trailwatch ride on fri. nights...paging g. hoffman? Shitty business going on again.

Slow,

I'm unbelievably sorry you had to go through this. I hope you are going to be alright.

If I can ask a couple questions, did you stay and talk to the cops? Do you have any idea how long they took to get there? And did they take a report? I ask this so I can try to get the police report next week, and see what they have to say.





No, neither Friday or Saturday nights. I will be talking to Greenway Coalition Staff about trying to change that on Monday, but in order to do it we are going to need to find new volunteers from somewhere. If you are interested in helping out, please let me know. You can PM me here, or email me through the Trail Watch Website, or directly at trailwatch <at> midtowngreenway <dot> org. As the last couple days have shown, this is the time of the year when we most need the Trail Watch, and if it's going to grow, we need everybody who can help to show up and ride.

The way I see things, in order to really make things safe out there for us all, we would need two shifts a night, and each shift would need to have a minimum of 3 people every night. In order to pull that off, my experience is that you need at least 5-6 people who are committed to a ride so that you've always got enough riders to have a shift. Each shift also needs a committed shift leader who shows up just about every week without fail (in the almost 5 months we've been doing this I've missed my ride once - because I was on vacation in California). It is, I believe, a mistake for most people to try and do multiple shifts a week, because it is very easy to get burned out that way. So, that means at least 14 shift leaders, plus 70 other seriously committed volunteers. Think of all the reasons you've found not to come out and ride with us, and you'll have a good idea the recruitment challenge we face.


Gabriel

REALLY bad idea. It is much better, if you see a situation you are uncomfortable with, to turn around and take another route.


Gabriel

Technically, yes. Practically, there are some problems.

Number one - Money for the equipment. Cameras which can survive the elements come in two varieties: cheap and useless, and less useless but expensive. And no matter what, they have to be wired to somewhere, over several miles of distance which requires it's own special (and expensive) equipment. There are already a number of cameras on the Greenway, but you can't really see enough detail to pick out faces so they are of very limited use unless you have other witnesses to identify the perpetrators. If they are low enough to actually pick out faces, they cover something under 1/10 % of the Trails (plus, they are easier to disable). If they are high enough to cover any real territory, you can't pick out faces.

Number two - Money for people to watch it. As I said, there are already a number of cameras on the Greenway, but during the hours when we most need the cops to look at those cameras they are almost always busy with 911 calls, or patrolling their beats. It's all very well and good for us to say the cops should spend more time on the Greenway, but they have a whole city to police, and for all that the Greenway and LRT issues get a lot of attention around here it is still a remarkably low crime part of the city.

Number three - Where do you put the cameras? There are certain patterns to the criminal activities on the two Trails, but a camera can cover a fairly small area. While the attacks have been confined to a fairly small area, it is small compared to about 8 miles worth of trails. That's a lot of cameras, which runs us back into the whole money thing.

Slow, I'm sorry to be all Recuitment Guy in a thread that should be about you. No one should every have to go through what you went through. I'm extremely glad your physical injuries are minimal. I hope your emotional injuries are similar, and that your recovery is quick.


Gabriel

Thanks everyone for your support and sympathy. I'm realizing how much I got knocked around because I keep discovering new sore muscles and bruises, but I am also realizing how lucky I am to have not been injured worse.

Gabriel-
This has made me realize how much the safety and usefulness of our trails depends on cyclists and trail users, and not necessarily the cops. I will volunteer for trail watch shifts. I don't think a report was filed, at least not to my knowledge. Will you PM instructions and contact info on how to do that? I think the cops didn't do it because I couldn't give a description of the attackers. And that is just more paper work for them

We have been wondering whether the attack on Dale that evening might have been the same people, and we are not sure how the police handled his report. He called 911, and he understood that they were sending someone out to check the Greenway, but he didn't actually meet with the police.

The two guys who attacked him were walking east on the Greenway near Garfield and certainly could have been attacking other people on the Hiawatha trail three hours later. Not that there couldn't be two groups of perps trying to knock people off bikes, but it seems like perhaps too much of a coincidence. Anyway, if there's someone trying to put together a profile, we would want to know about it.

Email sent to trailwatch about being a new scheduled volunteer.