Baytown Police Department hits streets with bike patrol
By Mark Fleming, the Baytown Sun, June 19, 2021
Officers Kenneth Hockless and Macla Aguilera are two of Baytown’s newly certified bicycle patrol officers. The program is new to Baytown police. (Submitted by Baytown Police Department) Kaleb Hockless
Baytown TX: People attending Juneteenth and Fourth of July events this year will see an unfamiliar sight: Baytown police officer on bicycle patrol.
“The Crime Prevention Unit invested in a handful of police mountain bikes and we recently attended [training] and became certified to ride them,” Assistant Chief Eric Freed said.
While riding a bike might seem like the kind of skill that comes naturally, the training from the International Police Mountain Bike Association was demanding, Freed said, covering issues from fitness to nutrition to the challenges of riding a bicycle while carrying a heavy equipment belt, working in traffic and working in crowds.
Training included riding the bike both up and down stairs, pursuing a suspect and, most challenging, maintaining control at very low speeds.
Officer Kenneth Hockless said most of the training was at very low speeds. “You would see a lot of people who had ridden bikes for years just fall.”
Officer Macla Aguilera said training even covered how to crash properly, protecting both the rider and the bicycle.
Training also included community engagement, which will be the focus at events like Juneteenth and Fourth of July.
“We would love to get some feedback from the community as far as their perception of the presentation of an officer on a bicycle. There are no barriers between the officer and the citizen. We’re not hidden behind window tint, there’s not a car door between us and we’re a lot more approachable,” Freed said.
Freed said the recent community sessions that were part of developing a five-year strategic plan for the police department got a number of comments about officers not being approachable enough.
The department started with five bike-certified officers in the Crime Prevention Unit, but Freed said he hopes it will expand to include officers in the Patrol Division.
In fact, he said, the idea for the program started with Assistant Chief Richard Whitaker, who ordered the bicycles when he was over the Crime Prevention Unit. Whitaker is now over the Patrol Division.