Christina, I'm so sorry this happened to you, I can't imagine how scary this must have been.  Good luck with everything and keep us posted when you can.  

Also, I have pointed out mistakes in Gothamist articles in the past and they are pretty good at making changes.  It may be worth telling them to make that parrallel to perpendicular change, as it could illustrate to the readers just how irrational this asshole cop was acting.

Christina:

The cops are not going to help you with their surveillance video on this. Perhaps your attorney can request the help of the JCC security. It was still light out at 6 PM, so they might have the whole thing on HD.

There are a lot of scofflaw cyclists.

But the ones you see consistently on sidewalks and/or riding against traffic and/or blowing through redlights with abandon are delivery riders. And while I know there are some jerks in spandex out there, too, they are a drop in the bucket compared to an entire industry that seems to refuse to give any respect at all to the rules of the road. And this industry has done more to poison public opinion against cylists than any other goup (or bike lanes, or hipsters, or the DOT Commisioner, in my opinion) in Manhattan, at least.

While I personally have seen hundreds, if not thousands of violations, I have yet to see a delivery rider getting a ticket.  Unlike my spandex clad brethren who racked up 230 tickets in one month in Central Park, largely during scarcely occupied hours.

They ARE different from us. Here's why:

The densest areas of the city for road traffic and pedestrian traffic are also the densest areas for messenger services and food deliveries. 

The vast majority of people riding bikes in central business districts are making deliveries. Even though bike commuters and recreational riders are increasing in numbers, they've still got us on road miles traveled in the places where more people will come into contact with them. They work entire shifts going back and forth among their dispatching office, pickups, and deliveries - all in the same neighborhoods. Meanwhile, we don't do our training laps around Rockefeller Center or Union Square.

I see far more delivery riders in Manhattan (than bicycle commuters), they're out more frequently, and I'm squeezed closer to them. The places we ride don't have the pedestrian density of Midtown Manhattan. Almost the complete opposite. Thus, most pedestrians only see one side of the story.

Also: we're focused on safety. They are working against the clock, and some of them take risks to cut time - not all of them, but enough of them to make it a problem.

Most people, including me, get much stronger impressions from the "risky" guys than the ones who ride by legally without incident. Such as it is whenever I use First or Second Avenues in Manhattan, where I absolutely percieve (true or not) that wrong-way food delivery guys outnumber all other cyclists 3:1.

This is why so many people are unreasonably afraid of getting mowed down by a cyclist and think we're ALL maniac road-users. Our success in riding safely, plus our travelling habits, mean that we have very little impact on the minds of most people. That's good! But on the other end of the spectrum, some messengers and food servers pick up tons of negative attention when they take risks that put other people in danger. 

Are some of the cyclists-at-work part of the "good cyclist" group? Of course. And do "we" occasionally take law-flouting shortcuts? Well... don't tell anyone, but some people in a certain New York cycling club I know might go half a block wrong-way down a side street to get to a building that would be six blocks away otherwise. And... keep this a secret... some of those riders have been spotted slowing down at a red light, looking all ways for a clear path, and then "going through" without waiting for green. It's horrible, really.

But there's a lot more of their road-miles in the "bad cyclist" group than our road-miles. And their road-miles are set among a much bigger group of observers than our road-miles. (Did I mention their accident rate is certainly much higher than the accident rate of all the other cyclists? We're still the safest large city in America when it comes to this stuff, but still...)

So, yes, the collective of messengers and delivery riders cause issues that are, in scope, unique to their group. Those issues increase safety risks and cause accidents for other road users - more than the overall frequent cyclist population. And those accidents gather more attention than anyone's good riding habits.

I'm gonna single them out until I no longer see them doing something dangerous at least once every 5 blocks on my daily commute. (15 blocks long)