Baltimore City Council members are condemning weekend dirt bike incidents that caused serious injuries, but acknowledged Monday that finding a solution would be difficult.
A dirt bike rider struck and seriously injured a female pedestrian who was in town for the Beyonce concert Friday night. Also Friday, a driver was beaten and taken to a hospital after striking a dirt bike rider with his car in Southwest Baltimore, police said.
"The dirt bike issue is getting out of hand," Council President Bernard C. "Jack" Young said. "Why jump off the bikes and beat them?"
Councilman Brandon M. Scott, vice chairman of the Public Safety Committee, said the recent incidents show the dirt bike issue is not going away.
"It's just sad and angering," Scott said. "If we're truly going to deal with that issue, we're going to have sit down and have conversations. ... There's no one solution. Children and young people in our city love to ride dirt bikes, and we're going to have to deal with it.
"We can't chase them. Chasing them with the police is not the answer because that puts more people in danger. That would make unfortunate incidents like this more common."
Scott called a proposal to establish a designated race track for dirt bikers in the city a partial solution "at best."
To start, he said, the city would have to figure out where to build a park, how to cover insurance liabilities and how riders could get their bikes to the park, if riding them on the street would remain illegal.
Also at issue is the type of park that would be build.
"Would it be a traditional dirt bike park? You might not get a lot of the Baltimore city crowd that likes to do the street tricks," Scott said.
Young said he has been working for years to address the perils of riding dirt bikes on city streets. He said personal responsibility plays a role, as does other factors like gas stations that illegally sell fuel to the riders.
"Pulling someone out of a car and beating them is barbaric," Young said. "And it's criminal. I do not think it should be tolerated. Whoever did it should be found and brought to justice."
Also unacceptable, Young said, is the person who fled the scene of the accident involving the concertgoer.
Young said he and others are working for holistic solutions to Baltimore's problems -- chief among them the murder rate, but also dirt bikes.
"I am fed up with lawlessness in Baltimore City," Young said.