 
|
|||||||||||||
              
|
Bicycle patrols develop a niche in suburban security
Monday, June 19, 2000 By Jan Ackerman, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
Not many workers approach the 2-to-10 p.m. shift with the enthusiasm of Todd Shipley. Then again, not many get to spend most of their working day on a bicycle.
"I love it. I wait for these three days when I can ride the bike," said Shipley, 23, a part-time Homestead police officer who started working this month on the borough's new bicycle patrol.
He covers the congested old business district of East Eighth Avenue and the bustling new business district at the Waterfront, along the Monongahela River.
Shipley and his fellow officers, Homestead patrolmen Chris Jordan and Brian Meals, are the county's newest bike patrols -- and the first ever for Homestead.
They ride on $1,200 Smith & Wesson mountain bikes, each with a siren and flashing lights.
"We are hoping to see things that perhaps other officers would miss," said Jordan, 32, of the South Side.
Jordan, a certified scuba diver, said the bike patrol also would be first responders for river rescue missions.
Homestead joins communities as diverse as Bethel Park, Baldwin Borough, Emsworth, Findlay, Forest Hills, Hampton, McKeesport, Moon, Munhall, Ohio Township, Wilkinsburg and West View, all of which are using police on bicycles to patrol shopping centers, parks and high density residential areas.
Police on bicycles are nothing new. The city of Pittsburgh and urban universities such as the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University have used bicycle patrols for years.
Suburban police departments are starting to find that having a few officers trained for bicycle patrols is good for the community.
Police find that having bicycle patrols improves officer morale and is a good way to do community policing, but also gives officers a "stealth advantage" -- they can ride right up to the scene of a crime before they are noticed.
Hampton Chief Daniel Connolly said his bike patrol officers inspect parks and recreation areas, school parking lots and densely populated areas. Because Hampton is a sprawling suburban community, he said, police load the bicycle on the back of a police Jeep and take it to more heavily populated sections, such as the Wyland area.
Last Halloween, Connolly said, police on bicycles rode in areas congested with children.
"That worked really well," he said. "This summer, we will use them to control our municipal park."
Some communities use police bike patrols to monitor the bicycle trails that are being built across Western Pennsylvania as part of the Rails to Trails project.
"We have been patrolling the Montour Trail for about six years," Findlay police Chief Paul Wilkes said.
He said that except for an unsolved rape in Robinson in 1998, crime on the trail has been minimal, mostly criminal mischief, incidents of indecent exposure or ordinance violations.
But Wilkes said a police presence on the trails is important, especially if someone gets sick or has an accident.
"One night, a guy had a heart attack and fell off his bike," he said. "A police officer [riding a bike on the trail] found him ... and called an ambulance."
The biker survived.
Bicycle policing requires learning new skills, everything from handling the bike in terrain ranging from trails to heavily trafficked main roads to pulling over drivers of motorized vehicles, which may require knocking on the windows.
Richard Troy, a University of Pittsburgh bicycle patrolman, trains 90 percent of police bicycle patrols through a program offered by the International Police Mountain Bike Association.
His intensive four-day training program takes officers through bicycle basics such as learning to gear down and moves to the specialized skills of the bike cop, like driving down a set of city stairs.
Troy said he recently acquired a $69,700 grant from the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation that will enable him to offer mountain bike training to 40 police officers from communities along the Rails to Trails bicycle trails in Allegheny, Washington and Westmoreland counties.
"Right now, it is in its final stages. The Allegheny County Police Academy will be putting it out in their next training program," he said.
Troy also plans to try to get a grant to fund police training for Rails to Trails projects across Pennsylvania.
"I also want to get police officers to do bike safety rodeos for kids and to teach safe cycling, so there is police involvement in the community," he said.
The International Police Mountain Bike Association was founded in 1991 and has more than 3,000 active bike patrol members representing more than 2,200 law enforcement agencies.
Most police departments don't have a budget for the program. They usually have to raise the money through private donations.
In Bethel Park, where new police bike patrols made their debut at the Memorial Day parade, Chief John Mackey said they will be patrolling the borough's newly opened link of the trail, as well as South Hills Village, other shopping centers and the Bethel Park Industrial Park, which is the site of many businesses.
To finance the cost of the new patrols, Mackey raised about $3,300 from the Montour Trail Council, the Bethel Park American Legion and the Police Merit Association.
Through money from Allegheny County District Attorney Stephen A. Zappala Jr.'s drug forfeiture fund, the Target store at the Waterfront and Chiodos Tavern, Homestead ended up with about $6,000, enough to buy three bicycles and to train and outfit three officers.
Richard Sharkey, borough manager, said Homestead's Eighth Avenue is a perfect place for bicycle police.
"It is congested and traffic is snarled," he said. "A policeman on a bicycle can take care of things that even a motorcyclist can't handle."
|
||||||||||||
