Recent actions by Norwich and New London to curb the deliberate noise and disruption by herds of young street riders can’t hurt. The question is: Will those efforts be of any help?

Does it help to outlaw ATVs, dirt bikes and mini-motorcycles on Norwich city property, or reach out to neighboring departments through mutual aid, as New London recently did?

The answer seems to have deteriorated from an early “yes” to a persistent “not enough.”

After two summers under a 2018 New London ordinance similar to the one about to go into effect in Norwich, Police Chief Brian Wright said the result had been “a huge success for us." The chief was looking at decreases in complaints by more than half in 2018 and by about two-thirds in 2019. He and Mayor Michael Passero credited citizen participation and community policing for improving timely response and identification of the riders who were alarming residents with their aggressive driving.

Residents had filed more than 100 complaints of unregistered vehicles in the summer of 2017, but police said the summer months of 2018 and 2019 produced 56 and 34 calls, respectively.

In the mid-summer of 2023, however, cities are again dealing with a high volume of incidents. Law enforcement in other cities, including New Haven, Bridgeport and Providence, is confronting a problem that seems to have swelled once again.

State law already prohibits unregistered motor vehicles on public roads, so the move by Norwich to ban ATVs, dirt bikes and mini-motorcycles from city property, akin to New London’s 5-year-old ordinance, is less about bestowing authority and more about committing to enforcement.

Street bike riders of today are not simply thrill-seekers like the skateboarders of the 1980s and ‘90s, who peaceably took their game off-road once towns created skateboard parks. Anyone who has had a rider pop a wheelie head-on an inch from their car’s front license plate knows that a big part of the rider’s thrill is intimidation. They want to rule the road and to make sure everyone else knows it.

That leads to lawless roads, unsafe for all.

The riders evidently see themselves like the outlaws who would gallop up out of the badlands and stop the stagecoach. The street riders do not rob the passengers of the cars they halt of money but they take different valuables: other people’s peace and sense of law and order. And then they ride off into the sunset.

So it has to stop. But how? Enforcement has no easy answers.

High-speed pursuits are out, not only because off-road vehicles can go where police cruisers cannot pursue but because the crime of scaring people on an unregistered vehicle is not worth loss of life or serious injury. That said, the riders themselves risk injury and put others at risk; in cases where someone is hurt the rider could face weighty charges.

Seizure and destruction of unregistered vehicles can be effective despite the embarrassing theft of more than two dozen bikes from police impoundment in New London in the past. The source of some riders’ bikes and ATVs bears investigating, because the vehicles retail for prices in the hundreds and thousands of dollars. Where do they get the money? Some of the bikes are undoubtedly stolen, but the owner of an unregistered motor vehicle is not apt to report it to the police.

Stiff fines may stand little chance of ever being collected, given that the riders are young and unlikely to have much independent income. Still, a provision to seize any vehicle for which the fine is not paid may serve as a deterrent to some riders who actually bought their bikes.

A provision of the New London ordinance prohibiting sale of fuel for dirt bikes in the city is easy to circumvent. And a notion that a municipality should provide a place for “safe” off-roading ignores the liability to taxpayers for the insurance that would be needed.

Cities seem to be left with strategies that may work a better in combination than any of them would alone.

Those provisions for getting unregistered vehicles and their riders off the road will require not only law enforcement at the scene but a commitment to prosecute the cases and enforce penalties that young riders would want to avoid. A heavy load of community service hours, something like picking up litter on those same streets, might help.