437 motorcyclists arrested this year: NYPD

Cops arrested 437 bikers for various offenses this year, including 187 arrests for reckless endangerment, according to the NYPD. As of Thursday, police had issued close to 5,500 summonses to bikers and seized 1,440 motorcycles.

"Across the city police have conducted 25 motorcycle-enforcement initiatives to deter and cite dangerous or illegal motorcycle and other motorized bike operation," the NYPD said in a statement.

The stats come as mayoral candidates Bill de Blasio and Joe Lhota hit the airwaves to call for tougher police action against bike gangs in light of Sunday's incident on the Henry Hudson Parkway.

Both candidates said instances where bikers take over the road are unacceptable. De Blasio said Sunday's road rage situation was part of a dangerous trend and pushed for a police crackdown.

"It's not legal, obviously, to take the law into their own hands as they appear to have done," he said during a 1010 WINS interview on Thursday.

Lhota was on the same page as his challenger. He told CBS/2 that the increase in biker gangs is a major concern.

"They are very, very aggressive. There's no place for that in the city," he said.

Lhota implied that the City Council's laws that have restricted the NYPD's tactics, such as the ones that prohibit racial profiling, created an "abundance of caution."

De Blasio, who is a staunch opponent of the NYPD's stop- and-frisk policy, called for the police to proactively go after the bike gangs by investigating their clubs throughout the city.