A year after dockless vehicles began appearing on Dallas' streets, and along its sidewalks, Dallas police said they have almost no issues with rental bikes and electric scooters.

Very few people have been injured riding the e-scooters in Dallas — only four since May 1, according to executive assistant chief David Pughes. And few crimes, if any, have been committed by people using the rental bicycles that began appearing last summer — an "insignificant" amount at most, Pughes told members of the Dallas City Council.

And most of those, Pughes said, have been "anecdotal" — nothing more than stories about drug deals and shady characters cruising neighborhoods on bright green and yellow two-wheelers, the stuff of Nextdoor.

Even if they're true, Pughes said, "I am not in a position to say that crime would not have occurred had it not been for the use of that vehicle."

In fact, as far as Dallas police are concerned, the biggest threat posed by so-called dockless vehicles are riders who won't stay off the sidewalks in downtown, the Cedars and Deep Ellum, where the scooters and bikes are prohibited by city code. And even then, Pughes said, Dallas police have been instructed not to ticket law-breakers.

"Instructions are to give warnings and education," he said. He noted that it's possible an officer has written a ticket — he had no statistics at hand — "but that' s our general instruction to the officers."

Worst case, Pughes said, the city will have to look harder at outlawing scooters on sidewalks in other pedestrian-friendly parts of Dallas — Bishop Arts, say, or Uptown. He recommended a study be conducted in coming months. But several council members noted that a stretched-thin Dallas Police Department has far more pressing matters than ticketing scooter riders sharing sidewalks.

Said Pughes, there have been discussions with city transportation officials about "possibly allowing parking enforcement" to write tickets, "especially in an area of high concentration."

At the moment, there are two bike rental companies operating with permits in Dallas: VBikes out of Garland and California-based LimeBikes. The latter is also one of two scooter providers; Bird, based in Santa Monica, Calif., is the other.

The council approved rules for rental bikes on June 27, including permit and registration fees and insurance deposits. That thinned the herd: Three companies, chief among them Chinese company Ofo, abandoned the market after once flooding Dallas with dollar-an-hour bikes.

Electric scooters, too, were legalized on that date — but for only six months, while city officials studied whether they were safe for city streets. Monday's briefing to the Public Safety and Criminal Justice Committee was the first of several before council finally decides on whether they are here to stay. Pughes and Michael Rogers, the city's director of transportation, appeared to offer no real reasons for concern.

"I am not hearing any updates on issues we need to address," said Lake Highlands' council member Adam McGough, the committee's chair.

Kevin Felder, the council member representing South Dallas, said he's heard plenty of issues from his constituents. He told Pughes dealers are using the bikes as "transportation back and forth between drug houses" and to commit other crimes. He said the city and bike companies need to do a better job tracking their rides, and offered one suggestion.

"When I was a kid we used to have license plates on the back of our bikes," he said. "I'd like someone to look into it — some way to track these bikes and see who's riding these bikes."

Council member Philip Kingston said his biggest problem was that electric scooters have been banned from the Katy Trail — when electric bicycles, which weigh far more and go much faster, have not because of state law, which does not consider them to be "electric vehicles."

Said Kingston, "That doesn't make any sense."

Rogers said after the meeting that he expects e-bikes will begin appearing in Dallas in the fall — "as soon as the weather gets nice."