Manpower problems force city police to take bicycle patrols off the streets
Sunday News, Aug 11, 2013 06:00, Lancaster, by Jeff Hawkes, Staff Writer
Riding in the dark, his bicycle lights off, city police Officer Michael Whitaker came upon a cluster of young people at Woodward and South Christian like a phantom.
Officer Ben Bradley, pedaling behind Whitaker, also arrived from the shadows. Seven or eight loiterers, mostly men, looked up from a porch and steps and stirred uneasily.
"The sign says 'No trespassing,' " said Whitaker, 39, straddling his bike in front of the porch and pointing at a handwritten notice on the porch post.
Someone replied sharply, "I belong here," but most began leaving.
The uniformed officers moved on, too, surprising as they rode both those up to no good and law-abiding residents accustomed to cops in cars.
"Now that's what I want to see more often," called out a man from a dimly lit porch on Juniata Street as the officers pedaled by.
"Oh, my God, ain't that nice!" remarked a gray-haired woman sitting with family on a stoop on narrow Lake Street.
A shirtless boy leaned out of a second-story window on Dauphin Street, confused about what he was seeing. "Are you a police officer?" he asked Whitaker.
For weeks at a time, Whitaker is a traditional police officer who drives a squad car and views his beat through a windshield.
A competitive cyclist, Whitaker would prefer to be on bike. But it's the rare day his 24-speed mountain bike, assigned to him in 1999, isn't gathering dust in an out-of-the-way room of police headquarters, where it hangs from a hook alongside more than 40 other mostly forgotten bicycles.
The bikes were bought or donated in the mid-to-late 1990s when neighborhood policing was fresh and the budget was big enough for patrols of cars and bikes.
Sgt. Bradley Shenk remembers those days. "You got pretty intimately acquainted with your neighborhood when you were out on the bicycle," he said.
Police supervisors, including Chief Keith Sadler, agree that bike patrols have value. But manpower restrictions, they say, have forced them to handcuff the bikes' deployment.
Facing a financial crunch, the city in 2010 eliminated 13 positions through early retirement and attrition. Ten other officers were lost the same year when Manheim Township police took over patrol of Lancaster Township.
"Nobody more than me would love to ... put several bikes out on each tour," said Sadler, who remembers as many as six bike officers patrolling regularly when he became chief in 2008. "But as effective as they are, they're not effective in covering an entire police sector and answering calls."
These days, the only section routinely assigned a bike officer is the 12-block Downtown Investment District.
A McCaskey High School graduate hired in 1998, Whitaker from 1999 to about 2003 rode bike full-time, except when streets were icy or snow-covered. As part of a community policing unit, he and a partner worked a Southeast sector.
They listened to what residents said were problems and worked on solutions. One day, they might stake out a drug corner. Another day they might speak to a landlord about trouble-making tenants or housing code violations, Whitaker said.
Although they backed up patrol officers on high-priority incidents and responded to crimes in progress, they weren't assigned routine calls. At its peak, the special unit had as many as 18 officers working sectors across the city.
"The bike patrol was the best thing they had around here," said Lee Shelley, 47, a 14-year resident of Green Street who said it's been at least a year since he saw a bike officer in his neighborhood. "We knew 'em. They communicated with the neighbors. I think we're going backwards."
"I felt safer when they were here," said Mary Jo Gonzalez, 61, a 30-year-resident of Chester Street. "They knew what was going on in the area and were able to take care of it."
The special unit was disbanded in 2003 because then-police Chief William Heim believed the officers were needed to bolster the ranks of patrol officers in cars burdened by a heavy call volume. "We cannot afford a grin-and-wave squad," Heim said in 2004, responding to residents upset by the change.
The bike officers were reassigned to answer calls. They could take a bicycle, but only on shifts that had an adequate number of officers in cars. Those opportunities became rarer, particularly after 2010.
"Last year I rode three times a month," Bradley said. "Now I'm getting out once every two months."
Officer Steven Reich, a patrolman for five years, is envious some officers get out on bikes at all. He's been denied any chance of patrolling by bike, he said, because bike training isn't being offered.
The one bright spot for bikes is the bureau's Selective Enforcement Unit, a small team headed by Sgt. Kevin Fry that tackles drug enforcement, quality-of-life and other details. A former bike officer, Fry this summer has put his team on bikes for four-hour tours about once a week. It's a zero-tolerance detail, and the officers swoop in stealthily on any infraction.
"The bike is a very valuable tool," Fry said. "Sometimes you're riding behind people walking on a sidewalk, and they have no idea you're there."
Bike patrols give bad guys one more thing to think about.
On a pleasant July night, a supervisor allowed Bradley to ride with Whitaker only because a reporter asked to ride with a bike officer. Whitaker rode bike on two other shifts in July for the same reason.
Bradley and Whitaker during that July night shift kept mostly to sidewalks and, between routine calls, nimbly reacted to anything unlawful or suspicious.
They cited a young man for drinking a 24-ounce Genesee Ice in the brick plaza in front of Fulton Bank on Penn Square.
Then, noticing two teen boys walking out of the East King Street parking garage, they rode into the garage and climbed to the top level, eyeing the parked cars for signs of forced entry. They found no damage.
And in front of a house on Pearl Street, they stopped a disoriented young man in a Chicago Bulls cap, cuffed and frisked him and called for a patrol car to transport him to headquarters on a charge of public drunkenness.
"I'm good, I'm good," the man insisted as Bradley pulled out the cuffs.
"I don't think you are," the officer replied.
Bradley followed the patrol car into headquarters to write up the charges. Whitaker, lights still off, rode on in the dark.
He didn't know when his next chance to police by bike would come.