CLEVELAND (WJW) — The FOX 8 I-Team has obtained video giving you the first look at police and state troopers carrying out a big crackdown on dirt bikes.
It shows how riders tried to get away, and it shows what it took to stop them.
So many of you have been calling for police to get tough on packs of dirt bikes, now video from Brooklyn police and the Ohio State Highway Patrol shows how they did it.
You see on the video, lights and sirens mean nothing to many of the riders. Highway patrol video shows dirt bike riders doing tricks on the street right in front of a trooper.
An ATV rider even sped away from a trooper and led a chase on the interstate. And, video shows Brooklyn police chased three riders darting in and out of traffic and rolling on sidewalks, too.
In that clip, an officer stops chasing and turns off as he approaches I-480 and Ridge Road, a heavily congested area.
Then, a citizen flags him down to tell him one of the guys on a motorcycle ran a red light there and crashed into a car. The rider ended up seriously hurt, and witnesses stopped to help.
One woman can be heard saying, “I’m a nurse. What’s going on? He have a pulse?”
Back to the trooper chasing the ATV, you see the rider get on the highway and refusing to stop. The trooper pulls alongside the ATV, and he passes the ATV, but the rider won’t stop. Eventually, that rider made a sudden turn off the highway and went the wrong way up a ramp to the highway.
Cleveland police finally arrested that rider.
It all happened last weekend as police and troopers took back the streets from the dirt bikes.
Cleveland police say 15 people were arrested on felony charges, 30 more got tickets. And, investigators also seized two guns and some of the bikes.
The I-Team pulled some of the cases just filed at Cleveland Municipal Court. Records show one rider drove on RTA tracks. Another led police on a 20-minute chase, and even at least one passenger got cited. The most common felony charges listed are aggravated rioting and not stopping for police. Investigators filed the rioting charges since the “ride” through the streets had been organized on social media.
We caught up with one man facing the felony charges.
We found Hector Munoz on the west side. Through an interpreter he claims he was on a legal bike, and he plans to fight the charges.
Through the interpreter he said, “He just got scared that day because all the police were stopping all the motorcycles and everything.”
Just this week, Cleveland City Council passed new laws with fines up to $1,000 for dirt bike tickets.
Meantime, all this comes after the I-Team revealed Cleveland police had done virtually nothing about the dirt bikes in 2022 before this weekend. City court records show just three tickets issued before this weekend.
The new video gives us a glimpse of everything from the crash to the capture to the chaos on the roads.