Dirt bike street riding: An escape for inner-city dwellers or nuisance for everyone else?

A shot of adrenaline flows through Francis Drummond’s body as he opens his ATV’s throttle, pops a wheelie and holds the four-wheeler upright as he rolls down an open city street for what appears to be minutes.

It’s a feeling that makes the 28-year-old forget the stresses in his life, the bills, the loss of friends and family. It’s a feeling Drummond wants to share with inner-city children facing the same challenges he grew up with.

“When you ride, you’re worried about nothing. You’re not worried about bills. You’re not worried about stress. You’re not worried about work,” Drummond said. “You’re not worried about people hating on you, talking bad about you.

“Everything is positive.”

Riding motorcycles in urban settings has been an escape for Drummond, whose exposure to the underbelly of city life began when he was a 3-year-old child seated in the family car as his father was gunned down a few yards away.

Riding dirt bikes and ATVs in urban settings, Drummond said, is a distraction for many unable to travel beyond the inner city. The activity has grown so much in popularity that there’s even been award ceremonies put on by the Motocross Freestyle Streetriders Association, recognizing everything from customized bikes to riding styles to going longest without grabbing handles. 

But it comes at a time when this sort of riding is getting serious scrutiny from law enforcement. Police in New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore and across Delaware have been cracking down on urban street riding, which can be considered a crime and a dangerous public nuisance. 

New Castle County Police Lt. Col. Quinton L. Watson said law enforcement has had to get involved because these bikers are riding up and down the street and over people's lawns, tearing them up.

"Some of them get into accidents because a lot of these guys riding dirt bikes and ATVs, they don't pay attention to traffic signs and lights," Watson, county police's deputy chief, said. "They skirt out into the street and they get hit and injured.

"They are also a nuisance. They are loud, they have this high-pitched zipping up and down."

Delaware officers have been aggressively going after these riders. In some cases, the agencies have implemented a new zero-tolerance policy and will seize any dirt bike or ATV they find on the road. Officials said they have seen an increase in street riders each year, and hope the new, rigid enforcement will help. 

County police officers will even fly drones over wooded areas to locate the illegal all-terrain vehicles. With the no-pursuit policy, officers don’t always have to out-chase riders, Watson said, but rather outsmart them. 

“If they are not right in front of the house, we tow them,” Watson said. “If we can find where these ATVs are, we will pull them.”

County police have charged 13 people so far this year with operating unregistered vehicles. This includes two Philadelphia Eagles, Wendell Smallwood and Corey Clement, who were riding off Del. 9 when police pulled them over and cited them on April 13 with riding off-highway vehicles in a county parkland.

Clement, a rookie running back, paid the $225 fine. The case for the Wilmington native Smallwood is pending. 

Riding unregistered vehicles on Wilmington streets is illegal, city police Sgt. Stephanie Castellani said, and many of the drivers tend to ignore rules of the road.

“They will drive recklessly, opposite side of the road, disregard traffic lights, do wheelies, and drive between cars,” Castellani said earlier this year.

Speeding down streets on the bikes without helmets can have lethal consequences, she pointed out. Watson said Nemours/A.I. DuPont Children's Hospital sees a number of head injuries stemming from the dangerous hobby. 

Police cited dangerous examples of the dangers of street dirt biking.

Last year, a dirt biker ran over a child hopping off of a school bus on North Van Buren Street in Wilmington. Police never found that dirt bike rider. 

Also last year, a 31-year-old dirt bike rider died on U.S. 13 after a head-on collision and in 2015 a 23-year-old man was critically injured when the dirt bike he was driving struck the back of a parked truck on Wilmington's North Madison Street. 

Wilmington officers usually do not pursue dirt bikes, because the chase is dangerous, Castellani said.

"When we do chase after them there is a risk that they will collide with another car, 9 times out of 10," she said. "The risk isn't worth it."

She said it seems like sometimes the bike riders try to bait cops to pursue them, by speeding by, revving the engine loudly and performing wheelies.

Residents have complained about the noise and perils of driving while they weave between cars. Even on highways. Delaware State Police said they have ticketed 55 bikers since 2013 for riding the illegal bikes on state roads. 

Kerry Kristen, of Wilmington, said that while the number of resident complaints has increased as temperatures rise, and the amount of offenders seems to remain constant. Wilmington isn’t the only city grappling with the trend.

But not everyone believes street riding is as negative as it's being made out to be. Several street bikers interviewed by The News Journal said their sport gets a bad wrap.

"They don't know what they are talking about honestly," Shane Driscoll, of Perryville, Maryland, said of people who call his sport a nuisance.

Driscoll said people need to educate themselves on how the sport could help kids stay away from crime and even teach them about mechanics.

"They get to put their hands on a motor and learn something besides being outside and hustling on the streets," he said. "I personally think it's a positive thing. I wish everybody would open up their mind and see it out."

Driscoll, who enjoys riding his bikes across the region, said there aren't too many public off-road places to ride these types of bikes.

The police crackdown, and other issues including the death of a fellow street rider, has Drummond taking a break from the sport. But he said that street riding for many urban youth is an escape from the harsh realities they face daily, this includes hunger, drugs and violence.

Drummond said riding nonmotorized bikes helped him cope watching other kids hang out with their fathers. Drummond's father, also named Francis, was killed near Wilmington’s Brown-Burton Winchester (Speakman) Park on Sept. 9, 1993.

Drummond was in the back of the family car that his mother was driving. His father was riding in the front seat, when an armed man on a bike pulled them over in the 2800 block of Church Street.

The gunman ordered the father out of the car.

Drummond’s father put out his cigarette and looked at his wife before exiting the car. Once outside the car, the father shoved the man on the bike before running away.

"Then the man started shooting at my dad," Drummond said. "He missed the first time then he caught him in the back of the head.

"I just remember my mom crying like for a long time. When I was around that age, she was just crying. She kept holding me and telling me everything was going to be all right. But I didn’t know what was going on at the time."

Drummond was about 6 when he learned to ride a bike.

That experience of the air blowing around him and the freedom to wonder helped him cope during his childhood.

This feeling returned to him after a bout with depression had him thinking negatively and considering suicide.

Drummond, whose Bacone College football career came to an end when he injured his back in 2015, said he returned to Wilmington, where he thought about dealing drugs in order to make money. By chance, a friend took him out dirt bike riding.

He wiped out.

“It knocked me unconscious,” he said. “I broke my ribs and dislocated my arm. I was down for a long time.”

He told himself he wasn’t going to ride anymore, but Drummond said he slipped into a deeper depression. Finally, his fiancée, Dana Thompson, asked him: “What’s going to make you feel better?”

“It might sound dumb, but I think I’m going to get back on the bike,” he told her.

Drummond returned to riding, but this time on an ATV.

Thompson said she noticed a difference in Drummond after he returned to riding.

"The bike really helps him as an outlet to kind of release all that stress," she said.

She also sees how children relate to him once they recognize him from social media posts.

"To those, kids he's like a superhero," Thompson said.

Recently, Drummond was on his way to see his grandmother in hospice when he saw some kids walking down the street checking car door handles.

The kids froze when he asked them what they were doing. But when he identified himself by his Instagram handle "Walamagic," the kids brightened up and started speaking to him.

Drummond, who graduated from college, is a youth counselor in Pennsylvania and a football quarterback coach. And while he’s taken a break from street riding, Drummond said young kids still relate to him because of that.

“It relates to their generation and how they grow up,” he said. “At that age, all I wanted to do is ride bikes. So when they see me, and I’m older, I understand the struggles that they come from because we have some the same outlets.”

Contact Esteban Parra at eparra@delawareonline.com.