Bikers speak out on Sunday’s Island wide dirt bike ride

Two Dirt bike riders say police are going too far by creating a task force to deal with the issue of dirt bikes on Island. It stems from Sunday’s ride, where hundreds of bikers rode across Grand Cayman, eventually clashing with police.

The two riders have no intention of putting down their bikes due to police creating this task force. They say it’s a passion for them.
After incidents like this during Sunday’s ride, the Royal Cayman Islands Police Service announced it’s creating a task force to deal with the issue of illegal dirt bikes, in but some riders say this is a step too far.

“We need to come together instead of fighting us down, we need to come together, I heard they made a task force for these bikes, for what reason only, because what are we doing, breaking traffic laws,” said Rider, Marc-Antony Parchmond.

Dirt bike rider Marc-Antony says the event could be officially sanctioned to ease the public’s mind about dirt bikers on the road.

“If the police want to use a helicopter to servile, just look at us and see what we’re doing that’s fine but you don’t have to block off the road,” said Mr. Parchmond.

Fellow rider Javahn Syms agrees, he knows there were reports of riders throwing bottles at police… but says the road block overall caused more harm than good.

“Some of the people went on a little too strong and gave a little too much negativity to the police but they shouldn’t have made that road block such a big deal,” said Mr. Syms.

Mr. Syms says dirt bike riding is very popular but no solutions are being offered, like a dirt bike track.

“We’re not going to keep our bikes parked up and make them rot, we’re not going to stop riding even if the police doesn’t like it, so their either going to build the track or we’re just going to keep riding,” said Mr. Syms.

The police reported that an ambulance’s path was blocked as it headed to an emergency, but Mr. Syms tells a different story.

“The ambulance was coming down and we were going up and then when they seen us coming we weren’t even on the other side of the road but they just chose to stop,” said Mr. Syms.

Mr. Syms says the dirt bike community in Cayman would help solve this issue if police and government leaders were willing to meet them half way.