ROCHESTER, N.Y. — The Rochester Police Department seized almost 20 illegal ATVs and dirt bikes off the streets on Sunday in a crackdown on the unregistered and dangerous vehicles.

“These ATVs and dirt bikes are unregistered and illegal, and when they’re driven on roads, dangerous,” said Capt. Greg Bello of the Rochester Police Department.

RPD, along with other law enforcement agencies, dedicated an entire day to search out and seize the vehicles.

“If people don’t want to follow that and people want to continue to break the law and they want to continue to create a dangerous situation in our city, then that becomes a law enforcement problem. And that’s where we have law enforcement solutions. And some of the solutions are we took 19 of these vehicles on Sunday and we wrote almost 100 traffic tickets on Sunday,” Bello said.

Many of the seized ATVs are stolen or unregistered. Bello says they try to find the owners but if they don’t find them, they are destroyed.

“We have a scrap metal company that we partner with. We do take some of the parts off of them that are sold at auction. But in general, the bike or ATV is sent for destruction again at a metal recycling company.”

RPD says they get a lot of complaints from people and they take them seriously because of the danger the ATVs pose to the public.

“We’ve got to make a dent in this. We want to make a significant dent. And we want to send the message that there are repercussions to doing this,” Bello said. “And so that’s where everybody coming together in trying to solve this and work towards it together. And if that takes enforcement, if that takes writing tickets, if that takes seizing vehicles, then we’re going to do that.”

RPD tells News10NBC they don’t plan to stop the details anytime soon.

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