City’s bike patrol officers aim for more interaction
By Paul Collins, Martinsville (VA) Bulletin, November 9, 2015
[Off the beaten path]
Off the beaten path
Sgt. Chad Rhoads (left) and Officer Lane Clark bike through woods near Swanson Street Park. The Martinsville Police Department’s bike unit officers aim to protect and serve by interacting more with the community than officers traditionally have when patrolling neighborhoods in cars.
Building relationships between the Martinsville Police Department’s bike unit officers and the public they are trying to protect and serve sometimes includes telling or listening to a joke, or accepting a challenge to a bike race, or having lemonade on someone’s porch.
And Sgt. Chad Rhoads and Officer Lane Clark have been less likely to have someone flip them the finger or curse at them when they are on bike patrol talking with people face to face, than when they were in their patrol cars passing by in a blur.
When there are crimes to respond to, being on bikes allows the officers to go where police cars can’t – such as alleys, back yards, paths and trails in the woods.
"The police department’s bike unit was started on March 16 as part of our community policing initiative. There are two full-time officers assigned to the unit (Rhoads and Clark)," Rhoads said in an email.
From March through early October, the officers used bikes that the police department purchased in the early 1990s. "We rebuilt and re-conditioned the bikes to get them road-worthy," Rhoads said.
Four new bikes were purchased as part of funds received from a Justice Assistance Grant (through the state attorney general’s office) for the Martinsville Policing Alternative Coalition. The coalition includes the police department; local and state governmental agencies; nonprofit agencies; and community members to prioritize problems and prevention efforts in an effort to reduce root causes of crime, including poverty, unemployment, drug abuse, teen pregnancy and domestic violence, according to Rhoads and the grant application.
The four new bikes arrived in early October.
Rhoads and Clark attended a one-week course at Pennsylvania State University in May. Certified instructors from the International Police Mountain Bike Association taught the class, which covered such topics as bike safety, bike repair, tactical use of the police bike, and crowd control. Since the training, Rhoads and Clark have trained 10 police department officers.
"Our typical day consists of … patrolling the Dick & Willie (trail), bike patrol in the uptown area and usually one other neighborhood in the city," Rhoads said. (The officers patrol different neighborhoods on a rotating basis.) "We average about 12-14 miles per day. Our longest day has been 29 miles."
"We have written some open container tickets, parking tickets and have made several criminal arrests, (including) shoplifting and a recent sexual assault. We have assisted Henry County with calls on the lower end of the trail. We will also help patrol units with calls," Rhoads said.
"As part of our neighborhood resource officer program, Clark and I are assigned to the uptown area. We attend meetings of the Martinsville Uptown Revitalization Association, the uptown merchants meetings as well as plan and present Business Watch meetings. We have spoken to children’s groups and church groups," Rhoads said.
Rhoads and Clark indicated that on their bike patrols, by interacting with people they are trying to build generational trust and dispel notions that police are bad guys.
They believe and hope that, as a result of their bike patrols, drinking, drug activities and shoplifting have declined in certain areas.
Memorable experiences Rhoads and Clark have had range from breaking up a sexual assault that was in progress and getting worse, to getting a stolen pocketbook back to its owner, to searching for children and incapacitated adults who had wandered off or gotten lost, to answering schoolchildren’s questions about the South Carolina school officer fired after a violent arrest of a student caught on video, to monitoring special events such as a 5k run and Oktoberfest.
The officers indicated that they are told every day that people are glad to see them.
Rhoads, who already biked a lot, did not have problems adjusting to the physical demands of being in the bike unit, although carrying about 30 pounds of gear on hot days was rough.
Clark said it took a while for him to build biker legs and that he has lost some weight since being in the bike unit.