Chief plans to resume police bike patrols
By WILLIAM F. WEST, Rocky Mount Telegram, September 3, 2022
Photo: Police Chief Robert Hassell speaks and fields questions during a meeting of downtown stakeholders on Aug. 22 at City Hall. WILLIAM F. WEST/ROCKY MOUNT TELEGRAM
Rocky Mount NC: Police Chief Robert Hassell told a recent gathering of downtown stakeholders that eventually the police department will again have patrol officers on bicycles in Rocky Mount.
“We somewhat had that in the past — but then, you know, they got reallocated somewhere else,” said Hassell, who has been the city’s top cop since May 2021. “But hopefully in the near future, I will have two officers dedicated to ride the bikes throughout the city.”
Hassell said one will be seeing these officers more in the downtown area, hopefully during the evening hours and more specifically on the weekends.
“I like bike patrols because that gets officers out of the car,” Hassell said. “It allows more of an interaction between those citizens who may be downtown and the business owners more opportunity for them to have conversations and build a relationship.
“So for now, you will have the patrols in the police car,” he said. “But hopefully in the future, once I get the bike team staffed, you will start seeing officers on bicycles (in) downtown Rocky Mount.”
The Telegram reported in August 2002 about there being a bicycle-based police patrol in place.
The downtown stakeholders gathering occurred Aug. 22 in the City Council chamber at City Hall, with the purpose being for Hassell to hear public safety-related concerns about the heart of Rocky Mount.
Later after the floor was opened to questions from the audience, Connie Durojaiye, who’s an office manager at the Rocky Mount Event Center in the northeastern part of downtown, asked Hassell about whether there would be foot patrols.
Hassell said the bicycle patrols would be a combination of bicycle and foot patrols.
“Hopefully, when these officers are out downtown, they should park their car and they’ll walk maybe a block or so away,” Hassell also said of the officers who patrol in police cars.
Hassell made clear the officers patrolling in police cars cannot park those cars and walk four or five blocks away because they still need to have access to them.
“But hopefully, once these officers, when they are in the downtown area, they’ll get out and do some foot patrol, maybe a block, maybe two away from it (the respective cars). Especially in the more active areas of downtown, you should hopefully start to see that as well,” he said.
The event center was completed in 2018 at a cost of $48 million.
Durojaiye, noting the event center is the scene of tournaments and concerts, said it helps people to see the police are not only in the building but outside the building walking around trying to make sure they are protected.
Durojaiye also made clear that people who park their cars along Church Street on the western side of downtown do not want to be afraid to walk from Church to the event center.
Harris noted the event center hires police officers to be at the facility, with Durojaiye quickly adding, “Yes we do.”
Hassell emphasized that when the police department looks at the plan for officers, that should include not only officers inside the event center but also officers outside the event center in numbers because that is all the same property.
“For example, when we have those great events of 3,000, 4,000 or 5,000 people, we know they’re not all in the parking lot,” Hassell said. “And they come from the neighborhood streets because I get, sometimes, those concerns of maybe a driveway or two getting blocked.
“So when we do our numbers at the event center to calculate how many officers we need for that event, we need to put in the calculation having extra officers to take care of the auxiliary streets around the event to make sure we have that presence,” he said.
Raymond Gantt Jr., who is president of the Edgemont Neighborhood Association, expressed appreciation to Hassell for having supplied officers to the neighborhood every time the association has called him.
Gantt also expressed appreciation to Hassell for partially taking care of the problem of motorists speeding in the neighborhood, which is east to southeast of downtown.
Gantt spoke of his calling in a complaint from one of the neighborhood residents about speeding on Marigold Street, which extends from downtown to a park. He said Marigold remains a problem.
Gantt said he and his fellow residents have not been addressed with that and that he wanted to know how he and his fellow residents can get feedback from stuff like that.
Hassell said the police department a few months ago purchased a problem-oriented policing internal app designed to track concerns and issues the department tries to address in the community. He said regarding the concern about speeding on Marigold, that concern would be entered via the app and assigned a unique number, along with the complaining person’s information.
Hassell said the concern would be assigned to either the police department’s Patrol Services Division, traffic unit or narcotics unit or whoever it needs to be assigned to address it.
Hassell told Gantt if officers enter what they see into the app, then the police department can subsequently contact him and tell him, for example, “Sir, we did two weeks of observations on the speeding concerns on Marigold. Here are the things that we did. Here are the things that we observed. Here are the actions that we took that we hope have addressed your problem.”
Hassell also told Gantt the traffic unit would check on the concern about Marigold.
Hassell said when the police department receives concerns about speeding on a thoroughfare or a street, the department first looks to see whether the radar unit can be deployed. He was referring to the trailer with a digital sign advising approaching motorists how fast they are driving and alerting them whether they are violating the posted speed limit.
He also said the police department could deploy a speed data collection device. He said the device, which is unrecognizable to the public, can provide the department with more specific information 24/7 about when violations of the posted speed limit occur — and when those violations are more frequent.
Hassell said if the department goes to the next step of having radar-certified officers in position in police cars, then the department, with the data, would be able to conduct targeted enforcement.
“We try to go through those steps before we just issue a citation, but many times that is unfortunately what we have to do,” he said.
During the early part of the gathering, Hassell said a few months ago after an incident downtown, he directed there be an increase in patrols downtown so officers are there on the weekends and more especially on Friday and Saturday nights.
He said the police department provides secondary employment for some businesses downtown and said some businesses who use secondary employment to have extra security in their respective establishments have had a long-standing relationship with police officers.
He also noted the police department has a crime analysis team.
“And they are pulling together their maps of downtown so we can start tracking incidents that may occur downtown,” he said. “And so that way, we’ll know better where we need to concentrate any efforts if issues do occur in the downtown area or if someone says, ‘Hey chief, we would just like to know what is going on downtown,’ we could easily pull that report.
“So they are working on creating reports for me to track incidents that occur downtown and where they may occur,” he said. “So that way we can put extra attention in those different areas.”