A New York cyclist has criticised the “indifferent” behaviour of a police officer who struck him with his car in one of the city’s cycle lanes, before attempting to claim that the injured rider “came out of nowhere”.
The officer, who refused to apologise for the crash and repeatedly asked the cyclist for his ID, faces no more than five lost annual leave days if disciplined by the NYPD, despite cutting across the cycling infrastructure when the rider was on a green light.
Cyclist Andi Khoo-Miller was riding on the protected cycle lane on Schermerhorn Street in Brooklyn on 10 June at around 2pm when NYPD officer Michael McGinn, travelling in the same direction, turned right across the lane at a junction, where the segregated cycling infrastructure briefly gives way to paint.
McGinn struck Khoo-Miller with the front of his car, leaving him with back and leg pain. The cyclist was later taken to hospital, where he was prescribed painkillers and forced to miss a day of work, Streetsblog NYC reports.
“If I was going a full 15 miles per hour, it could have been so, so much worse,” Khoo-Miller told the blog, explaining that both he and the officer slowed down slightly just before the collision, “saving him from a serious injury”.
According to a police report written by another officer, footage of the crash shows that McGinn never came to a full stop before turning right and did not indicate before turning.
The NYPD’s Patrol Guide stipulates that officers must obey traffic laws “except under exceptional circumstances or extreme emergency”. Those conditions, the report stated, were not met by McGinn, whose sirens and lights were off at the time of the crash.
While it is not clear whether the officer will be disciplined for the crash, the NYPD’S disciplinary procedures state that he will face a maximum of five lost annual leave days for failing to indicate before turning at a junction.
Beyond the crash itself, Khoo-Miller criticised the officer’s attitude, claiming he was “indifferent” to the danger he posed to a vulnerable road user.
The cyclist claimed McGinn told him that he “came out of nowhere”, before repeatedly asking Khoo-Miller to show his ID. The officer also couldn’t understand why Khoo-Miller wanted another member of the NYPD to attend the scene and take his report, the cyclist says.
“He seemed like he didn’t give a shit,” Khoo-Miller said. “I asked him to apologise and he said, ‘I would, but I don’t like your attitude’.”
Speaking to McGinn’s lieutenant, who eventually drove to the scene, the cyclist told him: “Your officer said I came out of nowhere”.
“Yeah, they always say that,” the lieutenant replied, according to Khoo-Miller.
The cyclist also told Streetsblog NYC that he frequently files complaints about illegal parking by police officers in the area, including on cycle lanes, but says “they just close them out”.
In 2025, a Brookyln councillor found 457 illegally parked cars every day on key routes in the area, 60 per cent of which had NYPD placards or memorabilia on their dashboards.
Last week’s incident isn’t the first time, unsurprisingly, that cyclists and NYPD officers have butted heads in New York in recent years.
In May 2025, we reported that a New York cyclist filed a lawsuit against the city’s police department, accusing the force of getting the law wrong when issuing fines to cyclists who ride through red lights.
The lawsuit came after New York’s cycling community hit back at plans to issue criminal court summons, rather than regular traffic tickets, for cyclists who ride through red lights.
Cyclist Oliver Casey Esparza filed the action with the aim of “ensuring the NYPD finally follows the law as it has been written for years, and stops unlawfully detaining and prosecuting cyclists when they’ve done nothing wrong”.
9 thoughts on ““He didn’t give a s**t”: New York police officer drives into bike lane and hits cyclist… before claiming rider “came out of nowhere””
This is disgraceful. If this had been a UK Police officer he’d be prosecuted and disciplined; quite possibly losing his job.
@60somethingcyclist Hahah, oh wow, I miss being this naive about the cops here.
@yodhrin To be fair to UK police, and I know this certainly wouldn’t apply in every case, the one time I did make a complaint against police driving, for pulling away from a stop straight in front of me without any indication, I had the superintendent of Brixton police station on the phone within 24 hours apologising and offering to send the officer round to make an apology in person and saying they would get retraining in driving skills (it’s actually somewhere on this site but it was a while ago and the search engine doesn’t seem to go that far back). Additionally, when I made a complaint against an officer in Battersea Park who not only accused me of swearing at a pedestrian, which I hadn’t, but who was also extremely aggressive to me and rude to my wife, I again received a very swift response explaining that the officer had been disciplined, a note placed on his record, warned as to his future behaviour and ordered to undergo retraining, so my experience in this respect has been entirely positive. I should point out that in both instances I had irrefutable camera evidence of my claims, I do realise that if it was just my word against theirs, as it seems to be in the case above, the outcomes might have been significantly different.
@yodhrin I should know, I was one.
Shurely an internal investigation *might* have taken place, which if it did, and if it came to the conclusion there had been any wrongdoing (two big ifs) “unfortunately the officer being investigated has retired and so there’s no further action we can take”?
The cyclist also told Streetsblog NYC that he frequently files complaints about illegal parking by police officers in the area, including on cycle lanes, but says “they just close them out”
Yep, that sounds like Lancashire Constabulary. They refuse to act on any close-passing report and have never, as far as FoI requests are able to establish, prosecuted any driver for close passing. They certainly didn’t act on or respond in any way to this report, because LancsFilth is as bent as a Nine Pound note:
ttps://upride.cc/incident/kn21axh_lancspolice_closepass/
Neither did they act on or respond in any way to this more recent report
They refuse to act against Marcus Wright and his eponymous joinery company Transit HN21 VXB now without VED for over two years and without MOT for almost 1 year, despite being seen regularly around Garstang and regularly reported by me, being listed at Companies House and even showing a photo of the offending vehicle on the business Facebook page. The police in general, OpSnap Lancs and Wyre NPT refuse to act against driver RLJs, mobile phone offences, white line offences and so on, and are a bunch of inept, useless lying tossers. Therefore, I do not agree with 60somethingetc’s rose-tinted spectacles view of UK police – Lancashire would have immediately binned any report like that in the NYC case above, and the totally useless PCC would simply write: this is a matter for the police and I cannot interfere. Thank goodness the PCCs have also been binned, although I doubt anything better will appear in their place. What with Charing Cross police station and the tragic Nowak handcuffing case, the Met’s Carrick and Couzens cases etc. etc. – the IOPC is going to need more officers than the combined strength of all the police forces they claim to regulate.
I suppose in the good old USA you’re grateful if the officer doesn’t shoot you, especially if you have an attitude they don’t like. I assume the victim wasn’t a person of colour?
@Bikebeer77 American Fork police being an example of the worst of USA police. Some interesting stuff on line.
I should know, I was one
Must be why you’re so good at writing bollocks, especially pro-police bollocks