NEW YORK CITY — Top police brass were scrambling Thursday to figure out how seven luxury motorcycles seized by the NYPD vanished from a police facility where they were stored.
DNAinfo.com New York exclusively reported the “Gone In 60 Seconds” disappearance of the motorcycles, worth tens of thousands of dollars, from the NYPD’s Auto Crime and Narcotics Division location at 500 Abbott St.
The theft was discovered Monday.
“On The Inside” sources said the flashy red, green and orange bikes had been stored in a box truck in the police facility’s parking lot, which is not heavily protected.
Department officials would only say that the Internal Affiars Bureau launched an investigation into the heist.
Officials at the Manhattan District Attorney’s office said the missing evidence will not harm their highly-publicized case because the NYPD confiscated more than 60 motorcycles when they arrested 33 suspects and announced they smashed a ring responsible for virtually all the motorcycle thefts in the Big Apple.
The missing motorcycles were seized following a 17-month, multi-agency investigation spearheaded by the NYPD Auto Crime Division and the Manhattan District Attorney’s Rackets Bureau, and several federal agencies.
A source speculated that remnants of the international bike trafficking ring tracked their bikes via GPS devices to the Bronx site where they were vulnerable to be stolen again. The box truck was left behind.
It was unclear how the thieves broke into the box truck and how they took off without being spotted.
“How they off-load that many motorcycles without ...being seen is insane,” the source said.
At the time of the arrests, Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said “these criminals have a magic act.”
At a press conference July 25 announcing the bust at Police Headquarters, the NYPD displayed more than a dozen of the bikes, along with an array of confiscated firearms.
“They would make motorcycles disappear and guns appear on the streets of our city,” Kelly said.
It was unclear whether any of the bikes shown off by Kelly that day wound up in the Bronx lot.
