Menacing migrant scooters kept out of reach amid NYPD crackdown

Fleets of illegal migrant scooters are kept stashed behind iron fences and in out-of-sight lots at shelters throughout the Big Apple, even as the NYPD continues to crack down on the two-wheeled menace.

Sources said the NYPD converged on the East Elmhurst converted hotel where Venezuelan national Bernardo Raul Castro Mata was living before he shot and wounded two of New York’s Finest on Monday morning – even as other scooters and mopeds are out of reach, The Post has learned.

Scores of the often illegal scooters are stored in lots at a myriad of migrant shelters throughout the five boroughs, including behind a massive fence at the former Creedmore Psychiatric Center in Queens where hundreds of asylum seekers now bed down.

“We cannot ticket these,” one off-duty city traffic agent said Monday. “I cannot even check. It is problematic. Once they are parked or stored on private property it becomes very complicated.

“The shelters protect them from us,” the traffic agent said.

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The NYPD has not immediately confirmed that the scooters were towed from the Queens shelter.

The Post revealed in a front-page report that the NYPD was fighting back in the midst of an unprecedented spike in the number of scooters and mopeds used as getaway vehicles in serious felony crimes – a trend that has coincided with thousands of migrants flocking into the city.

NYPD stats show that among the seven most serious crimes, scooters, mopeds and motorcycles were involved 790 times so far this year – compared to just 156 times over the same span in 2022.

Last week, cops hit the streets and seized 39 of the troublesome two-wheelers and issued summonses.

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The scooters have become a menace on Big Apple streets, as hundreds of migrants now use them to work underground food-delivery jobs while still others use them for a more sinister enterprise.

The notorious Venezuelan Tren de Aragua gang has “coordinators” in New York City to recruit migrant crooks, providing them with instructions and a vehicle for often violent robberies, sources said.

That revelation allegedly came from a hospital bed interview with Bernardo Raul Castro Mata , a 19-year-old Venezuelan gangbanger facing attempted murder charges in the June 3 shooting of two cops.

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The NYPD reportedly took another stab at the moped menace at the East Elmhurst shelter on Monday, sources said, despite continued challenges to the citywide crackdown, sources said.

A migrant shelter in Long Island City had 23 scooters parked on the street – being guarded by security guards, who said cops have never showed up to check and impound the vehicles.

At Creedmoor, an 8-foot-high fence surrounds the former psych hospital and serves to conceal the fleet of scooters that frequently leave and return to the property.

“They make too much noise,” said a mom who lives across from the facility. “They’re scaring the kids. On the street it scares me too, especially when I’m with the kids and suddenly, boom! The loud motor noise.

A teacher at the nearby PS 18 Winchester Elementary School called the vehicles “unpredictable.”

“The kids are not happy about the scooters,” she said. “Mostly I think they’re just afraid of the sound.”

The NYPD and officials at City Hall did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

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