St. Paul joins many other major cities like LA and Austin, who are investigating vandalism against rental electronic scooters.
Between June 25 and June 27, 49 Spin scooters were wrecked in downtown St. Paul, according to the police department. The company sees one or two damaged scooters a week, but nothing like this: handlebars were bent, brake lines cut and sensors damaged. It costs $1,200 dollars to repair each one, so the total cost is in the tens of thousands.
As the presence of the scooters, which require a smart phone to operate, proliferated in the last couple of years, vandalism is something the tech companies have been dealing with in many cities like LA and Austin, and now St. Paul.
Department spokesman Steve Linders says they don't know why it happened.
"We don't know right now if it's somebody who is angry that the scooters are in town, someone who's had a bad experience with the scooters or someone who just thinks it fun or funny to be doing," he said. "We're taking it very seriously and we're working to find that person."
An instagram account with nearly 100,000 followers even posts pictures and videos of scooters being destroyed or damaged.
A post shared by Bird Graveyard (@birdgraveyard) on Jun 22, 2019 at 2:44pm PDT
The anonymous people behind the account Bird Graveyard, referring to another scooter company, told the website Vice that it's funny to watch them be tossed into water or lit on fire. People who submitted video told the site that they did it because the scooters are urban clutter and disrupt public transit.
Officers in St. Paul are looking at surveillance video and talking to people who may have been downtown when the destruction occurred.