A 23-year-old man has been issued with an ASBO following a police crackdown on the illegal off-road use of motorcycles in parts of Dundee and Angus.
Operation Trail Folgore was a one-day Tayside Police pilot targeting those who break the law by riding the vehicles on wasteland and parkland, and officers carried out patrols on quad bikes.
Sergeant Lee Robertson of the Eastern Division road policing unit and Constable Euan Stewart of the search and rescue unit targeted the derelict Baldovan House, near Strathmartine, which is a regular haunt for the activity.
Sgt Robertson said the bikes not only cause an antisocial nuisance to people who live nearby, they can be extremely dangerous.He said, “We’ve had so many calls about the problem in Eastern Division and we’ve had 19 complaints about Baldovan House in the past month.”There have also been two fatalities within our division due to off-road motorcycle use, so we want to get the safety message across.”IgnoranceAccording to Sgt Robertson, the majority of the culprits tend to be younger people but some can be adults.
He said, “Sometimes it’s just through ignorance and we find families going out to patches of land but this does not defend their actions.
“The land has not been certified and tested for off-road use, there is debris such as glass and pieces of metal and it is a high-risk environment.”
In addition to the quad bikes, which are normally used by the force’s search and rescue unit, four officers patrolled the nearby area on motorcycles.
After a spell at Baldovan House, the team moved on to housing schemes in the north of Dundee, including Kirkton, St Mary’s, Whitfield and Downfield.
The ASBO was issued following a report of a man riding a motorcycle in Lintrathen Park. It is understood he had borrowed the bike but the owner drove it away before police could apprehend him as well.
During patrols in the housing schemes, a motorcyclist was charged for driving licence offences in Emmock Road and four other drivers received tickets for minor traffic offences.CheckpointsIn addition, the team set up road checkpoints to talk to drivers and look at vans, which are often used to transport the bikes.
Sgt Robertson said the combined community safety initiative, which crossed two of the force’s boundaries, was part of a long-standing operation to look at off-road bikes, especially with the summer holidays on the way.
He said, “We really wanted to make an impact and if the operation is seen as feasible it might move to other places where there is a problem with off-road motorbikes.
“We wanted to put officers into the drivers’ environment to see if we could make contact with them.”
He added, “The quads appeared to be a good resource for dealing with the bikes and they enabled us to quickly traverse the city in ways you could not with a normal patrol car.
“We also wanted to have a high-visibility presence to show the community we’re out patrolling the streets.”