Bicycle Cops Having Big Impact In Boston Community
In a recent post on my encounter with an SFPD officer, I mused that San Francisco would be better off if we got rid of some car patrols and went with more cops on bicycles:
If we got rid of many of the unnecessary car patrols in the city, we could probably add an extra 100 bicycle officers to the City police force. Those cars are incredibly expensive to buy, operate, and maintain. It’s just throwing money away.
I’m generally more for spending money on crime prevention than on crime enforcement, but if we’re going to be spending the money on enforcement, we might as well spend it wisely.
I don’t know if the Orchard Gardens complex replaced car patrols with bike patrols, but it seems that the bike patrols are having a major impact:
For the first time in 35 years, Rena Bobbitt, 68, feels comfortable being outside in her Orchard Gardens public housing complex.
“I was able to sit out here on the porch this summer,†she said. “Things are better . . . because we see the bicycles.â€
Bobbitt is referring to the Boston police officers who patrol the complex nightly on bikes. The 17 cops comprise the area’s Safe Street Team - and are credited with a nearly 40 percent drop in crime since they were deployed in August 2007. Car robberies are down from 41 to 13. Housebreaks are down by half to 8.
It was just over a year ago that Bobbitt’s neighbor, Joyce Gomes, then 68, was grazed in the thigh by an indiscriminate hail of bullets - a mindless display of gang violence that typified the need for drastic action.
It turns out the bike cops - with their ability to ride up on kids doing drugs, get places that cruisers cannot and make constant contact with residents - were that drastic action. And they had able partners in the local crime watch, which began its own campaign.
It might be time we study up on this in San Francisco — get the take on cops-on-bikes from SFPD, and if it makes sense, lobby for more cops on bikes. We might achieve better policing, take some cars off the road, save some money, and further institutionalize learning about bicycles and bicycle law within the SFPD. Sounds like a win to me.
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October 28th, 2008 at 10:46 am
I walk down Hyde St in the Tenderloin on my way to BART most mornings, and have noticed a real uptick in the frequency of SFPD cops on bikes. It seems to be a really effective way for them to police the neighborhood without clogging traffic, and they can be right where they’re needed when they need to be there. I don’t have any statistics on this but anecdotally it seems like they’re making a big difference.