Bicycle Police Patrol Experiment Hailed as a Success in Oxnard

Two drug dealers were doing business in Oxnard’s La Colonia neighborhood when the pair of clean-cut men rode up on their customized mountain bikes.

Moments later, the dealers were in handcuffs, shocked to learn that they had mistaken members of the Oxnard Police Department for Mormon missionaries who regularly ride through the area.

The bust is one of many that Oxnard police officials cite when describing the force’s latest weapon against street crime, the bicycle patrol.

The Oxnard bike detail, which has just concluded a three-month trial period, deployed two radio-equipped officers each day to high-crime areas on $900 Raleigh mountain bikes specially designed for police use.

Everyone involved--including the 10 bicycle-trained officers, their supervisors and the public--deems the program an unequivocal success, said Sgt. Robert Elder, who coordinated day-to-day operations of the unit. And it resulted in what Elder called “some excellent arrests.”

“The quiet, stealth-type mode they work in lends itself to getting much closer to crime situations before the criminals know you are there,” he said.

The idea of putting police officers on bicycles is not new; cycling officers rode a beat before the first police cars went into operation. Today, officers can be found patrolling on bicycles from the neon lights of the Las Vegas Strip to the ramshackle public housing projects in the East.

In Ventura County, several other law enforcement agencies have incorporated bicycle patrols into their forces or have plans to do so, although none on as great a scale as that of Oxnard.

The Ventura Police Department deploys a four-person bicycle patrol each summer to augment its weekend coverage of beachside communities. Ventura police officials said the beach bike patrol, begun in 1988, improves mobility along the beaches and improves the department’s image.

Ventura County sheriff’s deputies in Fillmore often left their patrol cars and rode bicycles in 1989 as a way to get a different feel for their beats, Sgt. Carl Shoenberger said.

Unlike the Oxnard program, where officers did entire shifts on bikes, the sheriff’s bicycle patrols were optional for the deputies. They have since been discontinued, Shoenberger said.

Police officers in Simi Valley could be patrolling the city’s bicycle paths, equestrian trails and parks in the future if the city’s budget crunch does not derail the project, Lt. Neal Rein said.

“We’re hoping to get the program into operation this year,” Rein said, “provided we can budget the money for it.” Since the trial period ended June 30 in Oxnard, the question on many patrol officers’ minds is whether incoming Police Chief Harold Hurtt will continue to staff the program.

Hurtt, who officially takes office this week, said he looks favorably on bicycle patrols, but he emphasized that he must take stock of the entire department before deciding whether to continue the unit.

Saying bicycle patrols are “an excellent goodwill tool as well as a crime-fighting instrument,” Hurtt said the decision on its continuation would have to be “a matter of resources,” he said. “We have to be sure we have enough officers still in patrol cars.”

To the officers on the bike detail, not being in a patrol car is one of the biggest factors in their crime-fighting ability.

“Your senses are just magnified when you’re on the bike,” said Detective Leonard Newcombe, one of two officers who helped design the unit.

“When you’re out there on a bike in the early morning hours you can hear things blocks away. That wouldn’t happen from inside a black-and-white,” Newcombe said.

Last month a night patrol officer smelled marijuana and then saw the bright red end of what he took to be a cannabis cigarette. The officer rode right into the group of smokers and snatched the joint out of one man’s mouth before any of them realized that a police officer was in their midst. The marijuana was confiscated and the man was cited.

On a bicycle, Newcombe said, response time is often faster for cycling officers than it is for officers in patrol cars, especially for short-distance pursuits or in times of heavy traffic.

In one memorable incident, Officer Roger Whitney was patrolling downtown Oxnard on a bicycle when he saw a burglar running from a television store with a videocassette recorder under his arm. Whitney raced down the street and met the thief just as he reached his getaway car at the end of the block. The would-be thief and his driver were arrested.

“That probably would not have even been seen by an officer in a black-and-white,” let alone responded to as quickly, Elder said.

On the down side, bicycle officers must call patrol cars to transport prisoners, and often have longer response times than officers in cars, Elder said.

Oxnard police officials have not yet compiled final arrest statistics for the three-month trial period, although Elder said most of the bicycle patrol units averaged as many arrests and citations, if not more, than they would have if working in a car.

Also, Elder said, there are elements of the unit’s effectiveness that cannot be measured by statistics.

An officer on a bike is “a much more relaxed-looking individual than the military-style officer that usually comes to the door, with the nightstick and the gun and all that hanging off his person,” Elder said.

The uniform that has been standardized across much of the country for bike patrols combines a light blue polo shirt with POLICE stenciled onto it with a pair of dark shorts.

“That works real good with kids,” Elder said, “because it gives them some contact with officers. The lack of the official patrol car and the badge and uniform makes them look more approachable.”

In Phoenix, where Hurtt was assistant chief, the bicycle patrol was also a public relations winner. “Tourists have even stopped at times to take a picture, or have their picture taken with the officers,” Hurtt said.

“It is a unique thing for citizens to see a police officer in a setting as informal as sitting on a bicycle.”