Make New York Post a Preferred Source A shocking video captured NYPD officers in an unmarked car running a red light and hitting a cyclist on a bustling Brooklyn avenue — sending pedestrians running to help her.
A woman on an electric Citi Bike was traveling down a crosswalk around 5 p.m. at the corner of Hoyt Street and Atlantic Avenue on Monday when a cop driving an unmarked white sedan blew through a red light, according to security footage obtained by The Post.
The car clipped the cyclist and knocked her off the bike and into the roadway.
Other pedestrians on the Boerum Hill crosswalk and bystanders scrambled to attend to her.
The car continued down Atlantic Avenue, and three NYPD officers soon after emerged from the vehicle and returned to the scene, according to witnesses.
“I was sitting at the Hoyt Street Garden reading a book, and I turned around, and I heard skidding, and I just saw this woman flying off of her bike,” the witness told The Post in the hours after the ordeal.
“She was in the street, and the car kept going down Atlantic and finally stopped when a huge crowd of civilians and other bikers formed around her,” she said.
The witness claimed the three cops — officers from Brownsville’s 73rd Precinct — tried to separate the victim from the crowd.
“She had a Trader Joe’s bag … and a mug was broken that was inside … and they were like, ‘Let’s not touch her property.’ I’m like, ‘I’m giving it back to her. I’m not going to give you her property. You just ran her over,” she added.
“I think she was in total shock, and adrenaline and shock,” the witness added. “That woman was hit full-on. I’ve never seen something like that.”
The victim, who wished not to be identified, went to the hospital after being hit and told The Post she is recovering from injuries and suffered “multiple bruises.”
She also did not recall hearing any sirens or seeing any lights as the car whizzed toward her, but said she tried to stop the electric Citi Bike after quickly noticing a car blew the red light.
The victim also claimed that the officers told her not to call 911 and encouraged her not to speak to witnesses.
She said she called 911 anyway and requested an ambulance, which took her to the hospital.
The NYPD said in a statement that the incident is currently “under review.”
Kelly Carroll, the Executive Director of the Atlantic Avenue Business Improvement District, told The Post that she was not surprised to hear about Monday’s collision.
Carroll called traffic accidents on the roadway a “layer cake of failure.”
“The first thing I tell guests when they come to Atlantic Avenue is ‘Please look both ways’ and ‘do not step into the street.”
Atlantic Avenue was designated a “Vision Zero” corridor under Mayor Bill De Blasio’s administration — an infrastructure overhaul that was meant to reduce traffic fatalities.
Despite “piecemeal improvements,” Carroll said Atlantic Avenue, which runs from the Brooklyn waterfront on the East River to Jamaica, Queens, remains a dangerous stretch where drivers often operate their cars “with impunity.”
“We need enforcement. We need speed cameras, we need red light cameras. I don’t understand how we can be a Vision Zero corridor and not have literally every mechanism and tool to make the street less perilous to human life,” Carroll said.
