San Bernardino police bike patrol focuses on community

By Ryan Hagen, The Sun, October 13, 2014

Photo: The San Bernardino Police Department’s bicycle-mounted enforcement team is greeted by a motorist along D Street in San Bernardino on Friday. The city deployed the officers on mountain bikes with the help of federal funding. Photo by Frank Perez.

SAN BERNARDINO >> As the five officers ride through a high-crime area of the city an hour before sunset, shouts come from the sides of the street, and they respond in kind.

“Hi!” one young girl calls out. Others wave. A man in a van gives a friendly fist bump.

These are the types of reactions the bike-mounted enforcement team is trying to nurture and is increasingly seeing since August when they began patrolling an average of once a week, said Sgt. Shauna Gates.

“It’s a completely different type of interaction than you get in a patrol car,” Gates said Friday, their most recent patrol. “It’s a lot friendlier.”

As a result, they can talk to witnesses without attracting the usual attention, build better relations and move more quietly, she said.

Of course, they aren’t softies either. They wear guns and bullet-proof vests along with their shorts, and although they chat with some residents they don’t overlook anything.

Riding through a half-square-mile area Friday, the team’s first hour of work led to four citations: a jaywalker, who ran when he saw them, and turned out to have gang ties; a pair of homeless women for an illegal encampment, whom they set up an appointment to help get other housing; a gas station loiterer; and a car illegally parked in a disabled spot. They also contacted city workers to clean up a yard filled with discarded furniture, less than three weeks after they had last cleaned it up.

Other days they check that gas stations in the area aren’t selling alcohol to minors and help with community cleanups.

It’s old-fashioned community policing, proactive work, the kind of thing San Bernardino increasingly has had to cut down on as its police force dwindles in size and budgets get tighter.

This time, the money doesn’t come from the city — it’s federal funding secured by the Institute for Public Strategy’s Byrne program, which is focusing on a central area of the city from East 16th Street to east Highland Avenue between north Sierra Way and north Waterman AvenueThe $32,000, which the City Council approved in August, went toward new bicycles — $4,150 for standard mountain bikes with lights — and overtime, scheduled to last until September 2015.

Data to show the effectiveness of the bike patrols and other programs that are part of the Byrne project are being gathered now, with the expectation they’ll show a significant difference, said Sandra Estadas, regional director for institute.

“I think that’s part of the comprehensive approach of the Byrne grant, so that we’re addressing crime from various different angles,” Estadas said. “So you have the enforcement, you have the community engagement approach, we have our housing partners. It’s part of a larger strategic approach to address the crime in that area.”

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