NEW
YORK — Manuel Perez-Saucedo was making his last food delivery of the day in
Brooklyn one evening last fall when two men on a motorcycle trailed him for
several blocks and then passed him.
اضافة اعلان
But when he stopped his electric bicycle outside his destination
on a dark street minutes later, the men emerged from the shadows. One had a
pistol.
“I knew it was my turn to get robbed,” he said. He remembered
picturing his 2-year-old son while the men took his bike, which cost him about
$1,600. “I didn’t want to leave him without a father.”
Perez-Saucedo, 33, is one of a growing number of delivery
workers who have been victims of robberies and other violent assaults as their
numbers have swelled since the pandemic first swept through the nation’s
largest city a year ago.
The delivery of restaurant orders and other goods has become a
bigger part of daily life across the nation since the pandemic forced millions
of people indoors. And in New York City — where the disease has taken nearly
30,000 lives — the delivery workers have become a lifeline for people working
from home and for vulnerable residents who have been warned against going
outside.
On any given day thousands of men, and a growing number of
women, can be seen crisscrossing city arteries, transporting takeout, groceries
and medicine in plastic bags on top of their well-worn bikes.
But their visibility has also made them targets for
opportunistic criminals looking for a quick profit through robbery, as the
unemployment rate has spiked into the double digits and economic desperation
has grown in the city’s less affluent neighborhoods, which were already hit
hard by the pandemic.
Stolen electric bikes can be easily sold on the streets for cash
or dismantled for their parts, the police and workers say. The bikes can cost
thousands of dollars and are vital tools for the workers, who often make less
than $60 a day. Many have come to rely on the bikes, despite the steep price
tag, because they can go about 32 kmph, enabling workers to travel farther and
make more trips to increase their slim bottom lines.
The theft of electric bikes doubled during the first year of the
pandemic, rising to 328 in 2020 compared with 166 the year before, according to
police data obtained by The New York Times.
Investigators said robbers often use fraudulent credit cards to
call in bogus orders and lure delivery workers to secluded locations. The
delivery workers then are faced with two dire options: let go of the pricey
bikes they need to remain employed or risk injury and even death.
“We believe more often than not it is a setup,” said Rodney
Harrison, the New York Police Department’s chief of department, who until
recently oversaw the detectives’ bureau.
The northern section of Manhattan, Southern Brooklyn and the
Bronx have seen the biggest spikes in robberies, investigators said. Most of
the victims were threatened with sharp objects, guns and other weapons.
Ligia Guallpa, the director of the Worker’s Justice Project, a
nonprofit organization that represents immigrants working in low-wage jobs,
said many delivery workers do not report robberies and assaults. A large
percentage of them lack the documentation to work in the country legally and
don’t speak English fluently. Many fear filing a police report could lead to
deportation.
“They are on their own on the streets,” Guallpa said.
There were about 50,000 commercial cyclists in New York in 2012,
the most recent year for which data is available, city transportation officials
said. That figure has since soared, by some activists’ estimates, to about
80,000.
One reason is the surge in demand for food delivery, often
through apps like Grubhub and DoorDash.
In October, more than 1,000 protesters joined a demonstration
outside City Hall organized by a collective known as Los Deliveristas Unidos to
call attention to the robberies and other poor working conditions, including
low pay, a shortage of protective gear, and a lack of places to rest or use a
restroom, Guallpa said.
Carlina Rivera, a City Council member from Manhattan, said that
delivery workers, who are considered essential, have risked not just their
safety but also their health during the pandemic by exposing themselves to the
virus each day. Many of the workers also face barriers to getting vaccinated,
even though they recently became eligible, including lack of internet access to
sign up for appointments and mistrust of the government.
“These are the people working day and night, and yet they have
been left out of the larger conversation,” she said.
Even if the delivery workers muster the courage to report crimes
to the police, many have trouble with the mental trauma that often follows a
violent encounter, social workers said.
Perez-Saucedo said he remained haunted by being robbed at
gunpoint. Since that day, he said, he watches his surroundings with heightened
fear and only stops to deliver food after he’s sure no one has followed him.
He recalled that on the day he was robbed — October 13 — he received
several text messages from colleagues warning him of the rise in robberies and
attacks in the area where he was working. Watch for anyone following you, some
messages said. Lock your bike if you walk away, others read.
By 9pm he had one last delivery to make in
Bedford-Stuyvesant. He stopped at a red light and grew uneasy when he noticed
two men riding a motorbike a few feet behind him.
When the men sped past him, he said, he chuckled and felt silly
for having been afraid. Minutes later, though, they accosted him. One of the
men lifted his shirt and pointed at a gun tucked behind his belt. The other
abruptly tore the bike from his hands.
“I was told, give them what they want or they’ll kill you,” he
said.
Perez-Saucedo, his family’s breadwinner, said he barely makes
enough money to cover rent for his two-bedroom apartment in Crown Heights,
food, and diapers for his child. After he was robbed, he borrowed $200 from a
sister-in-law and drained his savings to buy a $900 electric motorcycle. “It
runs a lot slower than my old bike,” he said. “But it’s better than nothing.”
Perez-Saucedo reported the robbery, but the police have not made
any arrests. The police solved about 36 percent of the electronic bike
robberies last year, according to departmental data. Harrison said the
widespread use of masks during the pandemic has made it harder to identify
people caught on video robbing workers.
He added that he’d like to see “designated, well-lit areas”
throughout the city where delivery workers can safely deliver goods within
sight of police officers and the public.
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