Lake City police to use bike patrols for special events. Here’s the plan.
By Tyler Fedor, The Post and Courier, April 24, 2024
Photo: Lake City Patrol Officer Edwin Settles (from left), Sgt. Cody Parker and Patrol Officer Quinn McClam stand ready to go on patrol with their bikes. Jonathan Laster/City of Lake City
LAKE CITY SC — Lake City residents will be able to see the city’s Police Department sporting new wheels at special events, such as ArtFields.
ArtFields runs from April 26 through May 4.
The department will use bikes to patrol only events for now, but Police Chief Patrick Miles said he thinks it could grow.
The department has three bikes and three officers with national certifications ready to ride them. The patrol was first used during the Lake City Food Truck Rodeo the weekend of April 20.
“We’re going to use it to its full potential,” Miles said.
The idea to implement patrols never occurred to Miles, who had walked by the bikes parked inside the station “a thousand times” for almost 20 years. He said he’s never seen a bike patrol during his 18 years with the department.
It was Lake City Mayor Yamekia Robinson and City Administration William Hall who pushed the idea. Hall had gone to a conference in South Carolina where he saw bike patrols and liked what he saw, Miles said.
So Miles got to work.
Turned out, the South Carolina Criminal Justice Academy doesn’t have official standards for what is needed to allow an officer to conduct a bike patrol. He called other agencies before getting to Myrtle Beach, which has an “excellent training program there.”
The training on the coast was a week long and saw the three trainees who volunteered ride 100 miles total throughout the week. The national certification Sgt. Cody Parker and the other two officers earned means they can patrol on bikes anywhere in the United States and Canada.
The trainees wove in between cones, went off-road, rode through the city and would have afternoon rides that went as far as 34 miles in a day.
There’s plenty of places in Lake City where the bikes will be the officers' better bet than a car to get around.
But being able to more easily talk to people around them is another benefit, Parker said. He remembered when he talked to one man about the patrol and the bikes when both were stopped.
“He just looked really excited about it,” Parker said.
Being on the bike instead of the car is one less barrier to interacting with the public outside of emergencies.
Talking to people outside of crimes, though, makes it easier to work with them in the event of an emergency, Parker said.
“Whenever we come out there, they know us from these kinds of things,” Parker said.
It could also be a new, effective tool of catching criminals. The bikes are quiet, and at night, Miles said he “can essentially make them invisible.”
Plus, being on a bike means the officers have to be more focused on their surroundings than when they’re in a car, which can help keep themselves and others safe.
The bikes can help Miles achieve one of his goals, which is to fill the roster at the station.
The bikes can be an icebreaker for kids who may want to know what type it is, which is a mountain bike, and maybe even get them interested in police work.
“Definitely has potential to open some doors, especially with the youth, and that's what I intend on trying to focus it towards,” Miles said.
Miles is still researching how bike patrols can best be utilized, and the possibility of having more certified officers and more patrols is real. It’s possible to put the bike on a rack on the back of a police vehicle.
For now, he wants to let the public see the new bike patrols.
Those attending ArtFields can see the three officers on bike patrol during the festival.