New IPMBA Instructor teaches bike
skills and a new mindset
by Barbara Winstead, PCI #731
Cincinnati Police Division (OH)
Who would have guessed that my enjoyment
for bicycling and police work would ever take me to the Republic of Macedonia?
But this past summer, I inquired into a position looking for a female instructor
who would be willing to mentor two female officers as bicycle officers and
assist in the instruction of ten other bicycle officers. With my IPMBA Instructor
Certification fresh off the printing press, I was anxious to teach - and
the challenge of instructing in a European country was something I hadn't
even dreamed of. I eagerly accepted the opportunity when it was offered.
On July 11, I met Officer Chris Russ of the Pasadena Police Department. I
would be co-instructing with him, and we discussed the many challenges that
would await us as we began our task of training officers in Community Oriented
Policing and bicycling. We landed in Skopje, Macedonia, at around noon. I
was not surprised to see military helicopters, tanks and personnel surrounding
the airport. I had read many State Department warnings advising U.S. citizens
not to travel to the area. Despite the many political reforms in the works,
it was still listed as a volatile country, and many of the communist-type
stigmatisms loomed in the air. We met our hosts from the International Criminal
Investigative Training Assistance Program (ICITAP), Gary Bennett and Don
Lizotte, at the airport. As we settled in with our host families we quickly
set about organizing our schedule and meeting our team of officers.
With a translator to assist us, we began teaching the basic IPMBA skills,
from slow speed maneuvers to emergency braking and the ever-so-exciting power
slide. By day three, we realized we had an exceptional group of students
who were up to the challenge of learning on a bicycle, but our greatest obstacles
were still ahead.
The police officers in Macedonia are still somewhat perceived with the "us
versus them" mentality of the communist era. (Macedonia is formerly a republic
of Yugoslavia.) Generally, the duties of an officer do not include self-initiated
activities or any type of decision-making. Each officer is assigned his or
her duties of the day and does not stray from those duties for any reason.
For instance, if you were assigned to traffic duties, you would not make
police reports for victims of crimes; rather, they are expected to go to
the police station to file reports. Also, in everyday community contacts,
it is not normal for an officer to carry on a conversation with citizens.
Our biggest challenge, then, would be to change this mindset of the officers,
and to do so in a very limited time. The bicycles were an easy way for the
officers to start. We began by having them engage with the children in the
parks, handing out stickers and attempting to reach parents through their
children. The parents were very standoffish at first, and the officers were
reluctant. It took several days of constant encouragement to get the officers
to self-initiate contact with both the children and parents. Within the first
week, however, we were making progress in that the officers were beginning
to say hello and hand out the stickers on their own. By the end of our training
we, as instructors, were gratified to see that our lessons on bicycle skills
were being used as a tool for Community Oriented Policing and were starting
to chip away the barrier between the community and the police that had been
built up over many years.
In 18 days we did not fix all of the problems, but we got our foot in the
door with police on bicycles. This, I believe, is a solid grassroots effort
to help out a fellow law enforcement agency to begin a new era in policing
and make positive changes in their communities' perception of the
police.
Barb can be reached at
barbarawinstead@aol.com. She
will be sharing her experiences in workshop format at the
15th Annual IPMBA Conference, April 21-23,
2005, in Scottsdale, Arizona. Register today to attend her workshop and dozens
more! For more information about ICITAP, visit
http://www.usdoj.gov/criminal/icitap/.
© 2004 IPMBA. This article appeared in the Fall 2004 issue of
IPMBA News. |
