Bike Bobbies and Cycle Cops: Real Community Policing
by Warren McLaren, Sydney on 05.11.06
It was a tiny story that caught my eye. The Thai Times was reporting that the Patong Beach tourist police were reducing car patrols, and replacing them with bicycles. Said to save fuel costs for the police service while still maintaining safety. And this would seem to be borne out by a report elsewhere that in some parts of the US, cycle cops have been instrumental in a 40% drop in street crime. Whilst in the UK a bike cop is said to cost a quarter of car cop to equip, and be thirty times cheaper in annual maintenance. The International Police Mountain Bike Association (I kid you not!) state that experience “has shown that citizens are more likely to approach a bike patrol officer than even a neighborhood beat officer, optimizing community oriented or problem oriented policing efforts. ... Bike patrol officers are often able to approach suspects virtually unnoticed, even in full uniform.” The IPMBA further suggests an emergency medical services (EMS) responder on bike “can mean the difference between life or death in congested or crowded conditions.”
To further enhance the training of cycling cops and freewheeling EMS types the IPMBA hold an annual conference. Which, as synchronicity would have it, is on right now in Ohio. Last year it attracted participants from 34 states and a heap of countries, including Australia, Canada, England, Israel, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and Tobago. As the above pic indicates there were a few jokers amongst them. ::International Police Mountain Bike Association.
My city has a large number of bike cops, as well as an unarmed security service that patrols on bikes, acting as eyes and ears for the cops. It gives me a great sense of safety, and it's quite something to see a pack of them racing to a crime scene.
I guess the stereotype of a fat cop sitting in an idling Crown Vic munching on donuts is over!
We got 'em in Chi-town too!
The police prefer to use 'Bike Mounties' for big street events, around parks, near beaches, and anywhere there are lots of people congregating. Patrolcars would have trouble getting through the crowd.
I once took an eco-bike tour with a group of people, and we had a police bike escort the whole way! Great fun.
Bike Cops are great for community policing. I've worked with several of them when I was a professional bike advocate and especially while developing the bicycle awareness for law officers program. Bike cops are definitely the good guys, for the most part.
Unfortunately, the vast majority of bike cops are just as uneducated as the general population when it comes to knowing how to operate a bike in traffic. Odd, since they are supposed to be the ones who know the laws...
Development Emergency Medical Service in America has received the second wave, improvement of quality of service and speed of reaction WBR LeoP