On the 15th June 2021, Merseyside Road Safety Partnership attended the crushing of seized e-scooters, scrambler bikes and other electric powered vehicles as part of ‘Operation Brookdale’.

Since Operation Brookdale’s inception the force has seen a year-on-year decrease in reports of anti-social behaviour and nuisance involving off-road motorbikes across Merseyside. In 2016-17 there were 10,511 incidents involving off-road bikes and in the last 12 months this figure stands at 5,150, a 49% reduction. However, many of our communities continue to be affected by off-road bikes and are, increasingly, affected by e-scooters.

In the last 3 months alone, the force has:

• seized a total of 183 vehicles
• made a total of 122 arrests, including for driving, theft and drug offences
• issued 143 fixed penalty notices

The threat illegal e-scooters can pose was apparent on seeing the range of those that had been seized, and were ready to be crushed for recycling.  Some had the capacity travel up to 90mph – posing a real risk to the public.

Chief Inspector Paul Holden said:

The success of Operation Brookdale is commendable, but we will not let up in our efforts. Each piece of information provided to us and each bike recovered only strengthens our resolve in tackling these issues for the good of our communities.

Merseyside is a safer place with each bike seized. The number of bikes seized during this year’s operation should mean that our communities are subjected to less incidents in the future and I also hope it makes people who use off-road bikes illegally or anti-socially think very carefully about their behaviour.

”Despite our successes in seizing these bikes, we will not be complacent. We know that many of our communities continue to be blighted by scrambler bikes being ridden dangerously and I want to reassure people that our work targeting scrambler bikes will carry on throughout the year and beyond.

We will continue to be out on patrol and to take action whenever the community tells us there are problems. I would appeal to anyone with information about illegal or nuisance scrambler bikes in their areas to get in touch with us and I can assure them that we will take action.

We’re trying to raise awareness of the illegality of private e-scooters, as well as their potential dangers.

For more information about the legalities involving e-scooters, read our e-scooter article here.