Clive Grunshaw, the Police and Crime Commissioner for Lancashire said: “There’s nowhere apart from [a] back garden that these scooters can be legally used, so it’s a confused message,” he said.
He urged police forces to stop selling e-bikes, which he said have become the “transport of choice for drug gangs” because they are “so difficult to catch”.
He suspects that some criminals whose vehicles are seized simply try to buy them back from auction websites.
Grunshaw worries some criminals are buying legally compliant e-bikes from police and then giving them illegal modifications.
Legal electric pedal bikes are restricted so they cannot drive faster than 15.5mph, but criminals can buy “tuning kits” online, often from eastern Europe, allowing some to travel faster than 40mph.
Durham Constabulary, which sold 29 e-bikes last year, told the they had recently reviewed its policy, and they “will now be crushed without exception”.
Greater Manchester Police sold one e-bike last year.
Police tend to sell the vehicles through commercial auction websites like Raw2k, a company listed by several forces.
The website regularly advertises e-bikes as “sold at the direction of police”, including a Chinese-manufactured electric dirt bike that it says was auctioned from Falkirk earlier this month, with an opening price of £250 (much less than the £3,295 listed as the retail price for a new model).