Then again, it IS communist China
Police destroy 14,277 “illegal” motorcycles with bulldozers
Today’s Daily Sunshine reported that 14,277 confiscated “illegal motorcycles” were destroyed by bulldozers in Yungang district, Shenzhen as part of the city’s “motorcycle ban”. The Shenzhen-based newspaper says that in April this year another 9.532 illegal motorcycles were wrecked in the same way.
Shenzhen began taking steps to reduce the numbers of motorcycles in the city as early as 1995. In 1998, the city stopped allowing residents to register new motorcycles and in 2003, the city passed regulations banning motorcycles from most parts of the downtown area. Today’s article says that since 2003 when the ban took effect, a total of over 580,000 motorcycles and electricity-powered bicycle have been confiscated. The Daily Sunshine article was unspecific about what constitutes an “illegal” motorcycles and how police go about confiscating them.
One rationale behind the ban is the rampant robberies in the city; robbers riding motorbikes routinely snatched handbags or jewelry from pedestrians and sped away often leaving arriving police in their dust. Some of these crimes occurred to happen in broad day light. The article cited a statistics saying that the motorbike robberies this year has declined by 58.32% compared with last year and three motorcycle robbery gangs have been busted by the police.
OK, now that last bit sounds more like Chicago style crime control: Forget all rational and recreation uses of an object and just ban, confiscate and then destroy them.
Yet another case where registration leads to confiscation.