Taking illegal dirt bikes and ATVs off the streets

Morgan Zalot has an article in the Philadelphia Daily News about a police action in Philadelphia:

You know those pesky dirt bikes and all-terrain vehicles that zip around, weaving through traffic in the warmer months, making any drive through some Philadelphia neighborhoods a nightmare? Now there are about three dozen fewer of them on the streets, thanks to a daylong undercover bust around the city yesterday by Major Crimes Unit cops and other officers, who are part of a detail aimed at getting the illegal vehicles off city streets.
As yesterday's sting neared its end, Chief Inspector Dennis Wilson, of Regional Operations Command North, said officers had seized 34 dirt bikes and ATVs.
About thirty of the vehicles, in all sizes and colors, were parked in the Major Crimes Auto Squad's garage in Juniata Park, where Wilson waited with Lieutenant Marc Hayes, who oversees the city's north region dirt-bike and ATV detail, and Major Crimes Detective Jack Logan awaited tow trucks bringing five more of the vehicles.
Plainclothes officers, with help from the police Aviation Unit, watching ATVs and dirt bikes from a helicopter, tracked down the bikes around the city yesterday, from Hunting Park to Southwest Philadelphia, the officers said.
Although ATVs and dirt bikes grabbed headlines last week when hundreds of illegal riders brought havoc to the streets following the funeral of Kyrell Tyler, an up-and-coming city dirt-biker who was shot to death, Wilson said yesterday's bust was not a response to that incident. "We do this on a routine basis. It's in the news right now because of what happened last week, but like I said, we did it all of 2013 and have been doing it all this year," Wilson said. "We try to use the same officers. They're very good at stopping these bikes."
Wilson said that, in 2013, in the city's north region alone, over three hundred illegal bikes and ATVs were confiscated during similar operations. This year, more than a hundred have been taken off the streets so far, and Wilson said complaints about the vehicles disrupting traffic and peace of mind in neighborhoods have declined significantly since last year. "They're very reckless. They're riding on sidewalks, they're cutting vehicles off. It's definitely a public-safety hazard, and that's one of the reasons we can't chase them," Wilson said. "If we do attempt to chase them, they're going to take off, and they don't have lights on a lot of the vehicles."
Police said roughly a thousand ATVs and dirt bikes seized as part of the initiative during the past two years are in the police impound lot in South Philadelphia. Because of a city ordinance banning the bikes and four-wheelers, once they're confiscated, owners can't get them back, police said, even if they purchased them legally.

Rico says that he's not sure that the scourge of bikes and ATVs is the worst thing affecting Philadelphia, but at least its' something...