HOAs Respond Effectively to Kids Breaking Rules on E-Bikes and Scooters

The firm’s latest Miami Herald “Real Estate Counselor” column was authored by Christyne D. Santisteban and appeared in Sunday’s edition of the newspaper. The article, which is titled “HOAs Respond Effectively to Kids Breaking Rules on E-Bikes and Scooters,” focuses on effective enforcement measures against youths riding electric dirt bikes and e-scooters who break HOA rules and become nuisances. It reads:

. . . The actions by the HOA leaders and residents of the Lakewood Ranch communities near Bradenton and Sarasota, Fla., appear to present a textbook case for how to respond to such rule breakers. They were documented in a recent article in the area’s Observer weekly newspaper that featured insights from several directors as well as residents, riders, and police officers.

“Residents are so frustrated, I am actually scared a resident is going to take this into their own hands,” said Eddie Gonzalez, a former police officer and the current president of the HOA for one of the several communities comprising the master-planned neighborhood that encompasses more than 31,000 acres. His concerns have been validated by the large number of recent complaints to the Manatee County Sheriff’s Office over teenage riders trespassing into the gated communities, damaging property, taunting residents, and riding recklessly.

The article chronicles how on March 23 a group of about 25 teens on e-bikes and scooters waited for cars to enter/exit community gates to gain access, then proceeded to speed over lawns while shouting obscenities at residents. The incident was caught on camera, but the teenagers were wearing full face helmets and could not be identified.

Several teen riders in the area have since been encountered and confronted by police.

“Our purpose was to educate (the teenagers) on Florida Statutes regarding electric bikes,” MCSO Captain Brad Johnson is quoted in the article. “We want kids to be kids, but we also want to make sure that we protect private property rights and make sure people feel safe.”

Residents who have told the kids to leave the area have been met with belligerence. One had a group of riders park by his backyard lanai and beep their horns, and another had kids return in the evening hours for several weeks to bang on her front door and garage door.

The Lakewood Ranch residents are not only concerned by the bad behavior, but also by the potential that the youths are going to hurt themselves or others with their reckless riding. Their fears were realized on March 14 when a teenage boy on an electric scooter was hit by a car at an intersection, but thankfully he was not injured.

The young riders have been spotted weaving in and out of traffic and performing wheelies on the neighborhood’s streets.

“Cars are having to hit their brakes. We had one resident — she was on the sidewalk using a walker — and they almost hit her,” said Gonzalez.

Rather than confronting the riders directly, many residents have responded effectively with numerous patrol requests to local police, who have since had a more active presence and conducted increased stops of young e-bike riders in the area. They have also scheduled a meeting for one of the affected communities with an MCSO resource officer specifically to discuss how residents should handle these issues as they arise.

Captain Johnson has asked that residents continue to call MCSO on its non-emergency line, and he has indicated its officers will keep focusing on making contact with the young riders.

Indeed, a resident couple reports they recently witnessed an officer hold some of the riders until their parents arrived.

“When the parents came down, they said, ‘You’ll never have a problem with my kids again,’” one of them tells the newspaper’s reporter, and they confirm that they have not spotted those kids ever since. . .

Christyne concludes her article by noting that the calls and discussions with local police officers, who have already taken action and indicated they are planning on continuing to do so, appear to be working.  She writes that they are far more effective than confronting the riders directly, so the best advice for communities facing similar circumstances is that they take a page from Lakewood Ranch’s playbook and focus instead on documenting the incidents and reporting them to local law enforcement. Christyne counsels that by conducting calls and meetings with the officers in charge of the area’s patrols, they can mount a meaningful and effective response while avoiding potential legal liabilities as well as escalatory and retaliatory conflicts with unscrupulous young riders.

Our firm salutes Christyne for sharing her insights on the takeaways from these recent incidents with the readers of the Miami Herald. She and the firm’s other South Florida community association attorneys write about important matters for associations in this blog and our Miami Herald column, which appears every two weeks on Sundays, and we encourage association directors, members and property managers to click here and subscribe to our newsletter to receive our future articles.