Can Bicycle Cops Help Build Stronger Community-Police Ties?

SEATTLE — The two officers were riding their bicycles south, on Second Avenue near Pike Street, when they came upon a man named Larry Mandic. He was lying on the concrete steps of the Eitel Building, a seven-story structure that has been mostly vacant for years.

Seattle’s municipal code prohibits people from sitting or lying on sidewalks in this part of downtown between 7 a.m. and 9 p.m. But that wasn’t the only reason Seattle Police Department Officers Norhihisa Etoh and Ponha Lim stopped to issue Mandic a $23 citation.

“You’re getting a ticket because I gave you a warning three days ago,” Etoh said to him. “Four days ago you were smoking crack at a bus stop. I think I’m being reasonable.”

“Go to the park, you can go there all day long,” Lim said. “You’ve got to work with me here.”

Etoh asked Mandic, who said he was 67, where he’d slept the prior night. “I can’t remember,” he replied.

Just west of where this was happening is Pike Place Market, a popular tourist destination where vendors sell items ranging from Alaskan Halibut to Afghani crafts. Looking south down Second Avenue highrise buildings jut upwards on the skyline. The nearby intersection at Pike Street was bustling with people going to and from the market. It was a sunny Sunday, the last day in May.

In front of the Eitel Building, there wasn’t much foot traffic. But as Etoh talked to Mandic, who was still lying on the steps, a woman walked past who Lim recognized. He stopped her to ask about outstanding warrants she had for theft and transit violations. Lim did not arrest her though. “I always kind of give people the benefit of the doubt,” he said as she walked away.

During the course of about three hours that Sunday, the officers would talk to at least a dozen individuals, and would point out others that they knew by name. These people included drug offenders, tourists, a shoplifter caught stealing a can of Red Bull from a grocery store, and a young man doing a dance routine near Pike Place Market, whom Etoh spoke with in Japanese.

Asked about how patrolling the streets on bikes is different from driving in a police car, Lim said: “The ability to instantly stop and talk to people.”

More Approachable

Over the last year, local law enforcement agencies around the United States have faced scrutiny following high profile incidents involving officers, which have ended with the deaths of unarmed black men. Among the dead were Freddie Gray, in Baltimore, Michael Brown, in Ferguson, Missouri, Eric Garner, in New York City, and Walter Scott, in North Charleston, South Carolina.

Tamir Rice, 12, was carrying an airsoft-style gun when an officer shot and killed him in a Cleveland park last November.

These and other incidents have ignited a national debate about how to improve the strained relationships that exist in some jurisdictions, particularly in poor and minority communities, between police departments and the people they are assigned to serve and protect.

While bicycle patrols alone cannot soothe the complex tensions that have built up over generations between departments and citizens in some of these places, law enforcement officials in a number of cities around the U.S. say that they can help build stronger ties between officers and the public, while also providing a valuable policing tool.

“It’s a lot easier for anybody to approach a police officer on a bicycle than it is one driving by in a police car, with the windows up and the air conditioning on,” said Ben Kaufman, a bicycle officer in Nixa, Missouri. Kaufman is also president of the Law Enforcement Bicycle Association, an organization formed in 1987 that provides training for bike officers. He first began riding on bike patrols about 14 years ago while working for a police department in Vermont.

Lim, the officer in Seattle, echoed Kaufman’s view. “Being on bikes helps you eliminate that barrier, and contact people,” he said. “Whether they’re good people, or bad people.”

No Cure-All

While officers on bicycles may be more accessible than those in cars, they have not been immune to the controversies that have recently embroiled local police agencies. Freddie Gray, 25, died on April 19. He suffered a severe spinal injury after police took him into custody on April 12. Two officers and a lieutenant, on a bike patrol, were the first to come in contact with Gray that day. They are now facing charges related to his death, along with three other officers.

CASA of Maryland, a nonprofit organization that provides advocacy and assistance for Latinos and immigrants, is part of a coalition pushing for law enforcement reforms to address, what they see as, a “statewide crisis in policing and community relations.”

Alma Couvethier is CASA's director of workforce development and education.

Couvethier said more bicycle patrols would be “wonderful.” But she also believes it will take more than that to change the way some Maryland communities view their local police.

“At the end of the day it doesn’t matter if they are on foot, on car, or on horse, if people are intimidated by them, they are not going to approach them,” she said. “What needs to change is treating people with courtesy and with dignity, and not demanding respect by intimidation.”

9½ Blocks

Leroy Menswear has been in business since the 1980s in Seattle. It’s located on Pike Street, just east of Second Avenue, and is less than a full block from where Officers Lim and Etoh stopped to issue the citation to Larry Mandic for lying along the sidewalk.

Asked if he ever talks to the bicycle officers patrolling the area, the store’s owner, Leroy Shumate said: “All the time. Everyday. There’s a couple that are my friends. I’ve been here forever, and they have been too, so you get to know each other. They tell me what’s going on.”

Shumate’s shop falls inside the bounds of a city initiative known as the “9½ Block Strategy.” Launched in April, it’s intended to tamp down drug dealing and other street crime, which had become pervasive in a 9½ block section of downtown.

Mayor Ed Murray, who took office last year, has faced pressure, especially from downtown businesses, to rein in crime in the area.

“It got way out of hand,” Shumate said. “It was all just an open [drug] market for a long time.”

Stepped up foot and bicycle patrols are one component of the strategy. The 9½ block area is located within the Seattle Police Department’s West Precinct, where Lim and Etoh work. And they are very much on the front lines of the initiative. Lim said he’d been hearing lately from undercover cops that drug dealers had become more skittish. “People are like: ‘I’m not selling to you,’” he said.

The West Precinct has three bicycle squads. Each typically has six to eight officers and a sergeant. Normally two squads are on duty each day, according to precinct captain Chris Fowler. Fowler sees bicycle patrols as especially valuable for an initiative like 9½ Blocks.

“They become subject matter experts in the area that they’re assigned,” Fowler said, referring to the officers on bikes. “These are the same people every single day that are out there causing some of these challenges and the bikes really get to know them,” he added. “They’re able to really figure out who can be diverted to drug court, who’s a Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion candidate, or who are the groups of people that really need to be arrested.”

Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion, or LEAD, is a program in Seattle that connects low-level offenders with services rather than sending them to jail.

Subject Matter Experts

The expertise Fowler described was evident as Lim and Etoh made their way through their Sunday shift.

“A lot of the guys downtown are what we call frequent fliers,” said Lim, referring to people who are repeatedly taken into custody.

Standing on the northwest corner of Second Avenue and Pike Street, they spotted a man named Delmont. “He’s been dealing lately,” Lim said. He and Etoh noted the new leather jacket the man was wearing. “He used to be a low-level user, now he’s getting nicer clothes.”

During their time on the corner, they also had interactions that had nothing to do with crime activity. An out-of-town couple stopped to inquire about where they could find a good bar with outdoor seating, and a young woman asked for bus directions.

And at one point, an amphibious vehicle, known as “The Duck,” which is operated by a local tour company, stopped at the intersection with a load of passengers and played the theme song from the long-running Fox television show “COPS.”

“Just gotta go with it,” Lim said, as “Bad Boys” blared from a speaker behind him.

Lim and Etoh are not new to the department or bicycle duty.

Lim has been an officer in Seattle for about 15 years. Roughly eight years of that time he has been on a bike. Etoh is a 16-year department veteran, and has biked for about a decade. Both volunteered for the assignment.

“It keeps you fit,” said Lim.

Prior to his time as a downtown bike officer, Lim spent about seven years working as a vehicle patrol officer in West Seattle. While he seems to enjoy his job for the most part, Lim admits that Seattle’s wet climate can make it less pleasant at certain times of year. “Wintertime, it sucks,” he said. “Sometimes I wish I was in a car.”

In addition to riding, the officers also post themselves from time-to-time in places where they can scan the street to look for drug deals, sometimes using binoculars. Etoh explained that the drug trade has changed in the area over the years. About 70 percent of it used to involve crack cocaine, and 30 percent heroin, he said. Now that ratio has flipped and there are also more pills.

Arresting drug dealers can be one of the dicier parts of the job, according to Lim. A person just wrapping up a sale is often stunned when suddenly confronted by an officer, which can lead to unpredictable outcomes. “It’s that fight or flight syndrome,” he said.

There’s another aspect of bike patrols that also makes Lim nervous: the occasions when he has to speed through downtown intersections. “You don’t have lights and sirens like a car,” he said.

Etoh has taken two falls on his bike. He clipped a fence once and went over the handlebars, resulting in a concussion. Another time, he wiped out on a wet metal grate and broke his wrist.

Asked if he’s ever gone down on his bicycle, Lim wouldn’t answer. He’s superstitious about discussing the topic, he explained. A minute later he took out a small notepad and wrote something along the lines of: “I’ve never fallen off my bike in eight years as a bike officer.”

Not Just a Big City Policing Tool

The streets in Nixa, Missouri where Ben Kaufman rides, are far different than the downtown core of Seattle. With a population of about 20,000, Nixa is located roughly 45 miles north of the Arkansas state line, just south of Springfield, along State Highway 13.

Kaufman characterized Nixa as a fast-growing bedroom community. “We don’t have a huge downtown, or a huge retail area,” he said. So where does he cycle while on patrol? “We try to spend more time getting into the neighborhoods and getting into the parks.”

During a shift, he might stop to talk with a homeowner out in their yard, or someone working in their garage. And these conversations have helped, Kaufman said, when it comes to gleaning information about things such as quality-of-life issues, thefts and vandalism.

“It’s the person who saw something out of the ordinary, or experienced something out of the ordinary, that they didn’t really want to call the police for,” he said. “But because they see you out there on a bicycle, and you stop and talk to them, they tell you about it.”

Kaufman acknowledged that for a smaller police agency, that might only have two or three officers on patrol at a given time, putting one of them on a bike can be a major decision.

“It’s hard for them to do that, to make that initial leap,” he said. “When you put an officer on a bicycle, it limits some of the things they’d ordinarily be able to do if they have a car.” One obvious limitation is that they can’t transport someone who they’ve arrested.

But in Kaufman’s view: “The benefits in the long run, far outweigh the negatives.”

Covering More Area

The police department in Worcester, Mass., a city with of about 182,000 people, located roughly 45 miles west of Boston, launched their bicycle patrol program in May. Sgt. Michael Cappabianca supervises 12 foot-beat officers on a 3 p.m. to 11 p.m. shift, and prior to the start of the program, each of them was given the option to cycle, rather than walk.

“Eight of the 12 opted to take up on that option,” Cappabianca said. “I joined with them, so there’s nine of us.” For Cappabianca himself, bike duty is something of a plum assignment. “I’m a road cyclist,” he said. “I ride a couple hundred miles a week anyway.”

“The two things I enjoy doing: cycling and police work,” he added. “I’m a very happy person.”

He sees upsides for the department as well. “We can cover much more area, we are much more visible because we’re in those areas longer, we’re much more approachable,” he said.

The bike officers are commonly looking for crimes tied to drug dealing and lower-level offenses, like public drinking. But Worcester has also struggled recently with violent crime. There were 38 shootings last year, a record for the city. On May 20, a bicycle officer chased down and apprehended a suspect accused of robbing a man in the street.

Unlike their colleagues in patrol cars, bike officers don’t have to respond to calls for service. Cappabianca noted that this means they can devote time to “interacting with the community, and trying to solve some of the issues that they have in their neighborhood.”

‘A Huge Disconnect’

But for some Worcester neighborhoods the issues are complicated and may take more than bicycle patrols to solve. “The communities of color in Worcester, they’ve been disenfranchised for a long time,” said Patricia Yancey, who is president of the city’s chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

The way she sees it, the police only end up encountering many residents in these neighborhoods when they’re responding to 911 calls. “When they approach the communities, they’re looking at the people who are on the scene as potential suspects.”

Yancey believes there should be more opportunities for police and residents to interact as fellow community members, in situations that are less tense and more positive. Absent that, she said, “the community doesn’t get to know the Worcester police officers, what they do operationally, what their responsibilities are.”

“There’s a huge disconnect,” she added. “I think, sometimes, it’s easy for both sides to profile.”

While Yancey was not familiar with the new bicycle program, she was especially optimistic about a series of community dialogues on race that is now underway in the Worcester.

The mayor and city manager invited the U.S. Department of Justice’s Community Relations Service to help guide the conversations. The most recent meeting in the series of dialogues took place on Monday, June 8 and focused specifically on public safety.

Ideally, Yancey would like to see the dialogues lead to greater diversity on the police force, more cultural competency training for police officers, and more interactions between the officers and young people in the city, possibly through activities like mentoring or sports leagues.

“The communities of color, too many of them, say that they don’t feel that the Worcester police serve them,” she said.

Could bike patrols help change that? From Yancey’s perspective they might.

“That’s a very important small step to take, to get them right out there with the community,” she said. “If they’re that close to people, they’ll start remembering people, not just the people who are causing trouble, but the people who live in the neighborhood.”

“Because a police car,” she added, “is very intimidating.”