Police on Bicycles

Under the administration of Mayor Dinkins and former Police Commissioner Lee Brown, the Police Department has been moving toward community-based patrol to increase police presence on the streets. In a major new application of community policing, the NYPD inaugurated a pilot “cops-on-bikes” program on Manhattan's Upper West Side in mid-1992. Joining — and perhaps upstaging — the Police Department are the Housing Authority Police, with 36 officers in six Bike Patrol Units patrolling in and around public housing projects in Queens, Brooklyn and Manhattan.

NYC Housing Authority Police are finding bicycles well suited for community policing and crime prevention. Photo: Anita Bartsch

Generally, the officers ride mountain bikes and wear shorts or cycling pants, and undertake normal, on-the-beat duties, from neighborhood patrol to anti-drug-trafficking. Both police departments say they hope to expand their bicycle programs in the near future. Apparently, New York officials are discovering what more than 200 big and small cities across the U.S. and Canada have learned: that bicycle-riding police are effective in community relations, crime fighting, and public security.

Although it's too early to report definitively on experience in New York City, police bicycle patrols have been a hit wherever they've been deployed, impressing everyone from bike cops and top police officials to community groups and individual citizens. By all accounts, bicycle patrols lead to less crime and higher arrest rates; in Seattle, where 82 police officers — 5% of the force — regularly ride bicycles on the beat, bike cops make five times more arrests than their colleagues on foot patrol. [1] As Officer Brian Hermes of the Boston Metropol-itan District Police (MPD) bike patrol explains, “The officers can hear and see crimes being committed that they never could before.” [2]

Riding bikes keeps the cops more vigorous and fit and helps connect them to the community, less hidden and isolated from the neighborhood than police driving in cars. Officers on bikes are simultaneously a friendly presence on the street and a stealthy, unexpected one in the hard-to-reach places where crime tends to occur. “The people get to know us as human beings and not just as guns and badges,” reports Officer Jim Smith of the bicycle safety patrol of Fort Worth. “We get to develop a rapport with them which naturally helps community relations. [The bicycle patrol] has one of the highest records of arrests in the police department.” [3] Bike patrols also save money — the total cost of purchasing, outfitting, and maintaining a police bicycle is only about $1,000 to $1,500 for the life of the bike, a tiny fraction of the cost of patrol cars.

To be sure, New York can pose special problems to bike-riding police, particularly concerning safety and security. For the NYPD pilot program, in Manhattan's 24th Precinct, the bicycle police — many of whom were already recreational riders, and all of whom volunteered — took a special training course in city cycling savvy with an expert local bicyclist, on hazards like metal plates, sewer grates and car doors. The police bikes are specially marked as a deterrent to theft. Yet even if bicycles were stolen routinely, the replacement costs would not begin to match the cost of buying, running and maintaining cars, or even the enclosed “Cushman” scooters used by the NYPD.

Bicycle patrols elsewhere haven't led to higher accident or injury rates. According to Sgt. Robert L. Follett of the Boston MPD, Boston's police officers on bike actually have fewer accidents and injuries than those in cars; in fact, over the first eight-month period of the program, during which 24 officers each did 1 to 2 shifts per week, not a single injury was reported. [4] Follett attributes this record to the better physical condition and greater alertness that accompany bicycling. “Cops on bikes are more alert, have more visibility, know they're more vulnerable to accidents,” says Follett. “Being in a cruiser, you have all that metal around you, you get complacent. On a bike, you see and hear better. Also you're going slower.”

Finally, cycling officers set a positive example for the public, encouraging civilians to try bicycle transportation. And perhaps as officers begin experiencing the streets from the cyclist's point of view, they will be less inclined to tolerate motor vehicle speeding and red-light running — the major causes of accidents for cyclists and for everyone else. Perhaps too, motorists will think twice before violating a cyclist's right of way, if they know that the insignia on the cyclist's jersey isn't a racing stripe but a police badge. If so, the nascent cops on bikes program could go a long way toward taking city streets away from both criminals and cars and giving them back to the people.

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