Boston police turn to bike patrols in embattled neighborhoods
By Jan Ransom, the Boston Globe, October 5, 2015
Clad in black and neon-colored shirts, they quietly zip through the streets, pedaling past traffic and through narrow alleyways.
They’re at protests and parades working to maintain the peace. In the neighborhoods, they know the players in some of the city’s toughest gangs and the residents who turn to them to keep their communities safe.
They are the Boston Police Citywide Bicycle Unit.
“We are the front lines in any crowd-control situation,” said Lieutenant David C. Murphy, who heads the unit. “We put out fires. We go wherever they need us.”
Their presence has led to a decrease in overall crime in some of the most violent neighborhoods in the city, police officials say, pointing to a 5 percent drop in Roxbury and a 15 percent decline in Dorchester and Mattapan so far this year.
“We brought them together to address the hot spots around the city,” said Police Commissioner William B. Evans. “We put them in the playgrounds [and] we put them in areas where we just had some recent violence. It makes [residents] feel more secure.”
After a man was shot to death in a Stop & Shop parking lot in Mission Hill on Sept. 16, officers with the bicycle unit spent the following night patrolling the area around Humboldt Street in an effort to quell any retaliatory violence that might occur. Police officials said the fatal shooting was gang-related.
‘We’re much more approachable on a bicycle. People come up to us and say hello.’
Lieutenant David C. Murphy, head of the police bicycle unit: “How do you measure prevention?” Murphy asked rhetorically. “[When] no one is getting shot.”
In the past year the bicycle unit has recovered six firearms. In a three-month period officers working the Hospital District — where drugs have been a major problem — have made 70 arrests for drug dealing and outstanding warrants. Some have dubbed the strip along South Hampton Street to Andrew Square “methadone mile.’’
Officers from the unit also recently stopped a rape in progress on Southampton Street and Melnea Cass Boulevard.
“My officers were in the area and heard the woman screaming’’ for help, said Sergeant Christopher Morgan, adding officers saw the man on top of the victim, slamming her head into the ground. “An arrest was made because the bike unit was there.”
The first citywide bike unit was established in 2005 and dismantled four years later. Police spokesman Lieutenant Detective Michael McCarthy said the unit was decentralized. Officers on bikes were assigned to work in certain communities within a police district forming what was known as the Safe Streets Team.
But Evans said he wanted to be able to send officers on bikes to the city’s hot spots with the idea that it would be a more effective way to combat crime. He created the current, highly coveted 32-member unit in April 2014.
It was expanded in June and now consists of 38 officers and six supervisors. They range in age from mid-20s to 62 years old — with some having had only a few years on the force and others a few decades.
The officers, who ride an average of 20 miles daily on their Safariland/Kona 29-inch patrol bikes, are all in great shape.
“I like riding a bike,” said Officer William “Billy” Dunne, 59, who has had both hips replaced and is praised by his colleagues for his sharp memory. “I’m exercising and I get paid for that.”
Fitness aside, the bicycle unit allows officers to connect with residents on a more intimate level.
“It’s almost like having a community meeting on the sidewalk,” said Sergeant Thomas Rose Jr. “If you’re in a cruiser, you can’t do that.”
One recent night when officers rode through Dorchester, a woman shouted from her window to the officers, “I love you,” others waved and smiled.
“We’re much more approachable on a bicycle,” said Murphy, a 30-year veteran of the force. “People come up to us and say hello and tell you, ‘Oh there’s a guy over there doing that. . . .’ They wave to us, they beep their horns — it’s different.”
And residents say they see a difference in their neighborhoods.
“You like to see their presence,” said Maria Rosario, 63, who has lived on Wendover Street for 35 years. “It’s much better now, before [the block] used to be very bad.”
After a while, residents begin to share information with the officers about crime, gangs, drugs, and other quality of life issues.
That happened not too long ago when Officer Franklyn Centeio was pedaling through Seaver Street where a mother of three was gunned down two months ago as she walked through Puddingstone Park. A longtime resident in the area told Centeio she feels unsafe in her own neighborhood.
“People should be able to come out and enjoy the neighborhood and [be] in front of their houses and live freely,” he said. “People shouldn’t have to live in fear.”
Responding to ongoing resident complaints, eight officers biked from the unit’s headquarters on Linden Street to Wendover Street — a roughly two-block stretch that had been plagued by some of the city’s worst gang violence. Residents there recalled a time when gunfire erupted on the block daily.
The officers arrived at Wendover Street at around 10 p.m., and about 10 men were gathered near a car in front of a stoop. The smell of marijuana wafted through the air.
The officers searched the men, who complained. The officers did not find anything.
Martha Brown, 75, said that almost daily, a dozen young men who are drinking crowd the space in front of her home, and she said she’s tired of it.
“Some of them don’t have no respect,” she said. [The officers] come through and make everything OK. They protect this street.”
And for the officers in the unit that’s what it’s all about — though some also see a need to reach the young men like the ones who had clustered in front of Brown’s home.
“The feeling of helping someone is rewarding in itself,” said Officer Isaac Jackson, who followed his mother’s footsteps onto the force. “People look at police officers as someone who locks you up all of the time, and that doesn’t have to happen. We’re not always here to ruin your day — we’re here to help you.”