BROOKLYN PARK, Md. — E-bikes are Zackary Brown’s primary form of transportation, and he says when a vehicle struck him from behind at this intersection on Ritchie Highway, police threw the ticket book at him, failing to recognize it was an electric bike.
After taking attendance, asking each officer for their name and badge number while recording it on his cell phone, Brown tried to explain to the officers what he was riding.
“See right there? MX650. I goes 18 miles per hour. It’s chain driven. It meets all the requirements of a Class II e-bike. It’s under 750 watts. I can show you the law.”
Brown says the officers weren’t in the mood for any lesson towing his e-bike and writing him 10 separate tickets in all.
Hear from Brown as he speaks on encounter with police
“His exact thing he told me was, ‘Does it have a motor?’” Brown told us, “and I said, ‘Yes. An electric motor’, and he said, ‘Then it’s a motor vehicle.’ I’m like, ‘Sir, that’s not how the law works,’ and he said, ‘Take it up with the judge.’”
In addition to Brown losing the use of his e-bike valued at seven to eight hundred dollars, he says he now faces fines totaling more than two thousand dollars.
The frustration didn’t end during the encounter with police.
“I called the impound lot and they’re like, ‘Well, you have to have a title to get it back,’” Brown recounted, “and I’m like, ‘Dude, there is no title. It’s an electric bike. I bought it at Walmart.’”
The response wasn’t much better at the Motor Vehicle Administration.
“After this happened, I actually took all ten tickets to the MVA that Monday morning, and the lady at the counter---she was like, ‘That’s one of those bikes you buy at Walmart, right? A Razor bike?’ and I was like, ‘Yes, I got it at Walmart,’ and she was like… she laughed so hard and said, ‘You can’t get those things registered here. That’s not a motor vehicle.’”
That’s not news to Brown.
After all, e-bikes are also his business.
He owns an e-bike repair and consignment shop, which requires knowledge of the law, which he claims the officers were lacking.
“He looked me dead in the eye and he said, ‘Sir, I don’t know the law,’ and I mean I think that’s messed up,” said Brown, “If the police officers are enforcing the law, they should at bare minimum know the law.”
When asked about the incident, police responded anyone who feels an incident was mishandled can file a formal complaint and the appropriate venue for disputing citations is through the court system.
