Poway Detectives Experiment With Pedal Power to Fight Crime

On the first day of school in Poway, a bunch of gun-toting bicyclists were on the job, nabbing motorists who ignored the school speed zones and student crosswalks. So started the first week of the Poway Sheriff’s Station bike squad.

Five Poway detectives who describe themselves as “athletically inclined” took to the road last week on mountain bikes, convinced that they can catch more lawbreakers on the streets than they can sitting behind a desk.

“And it cuts down on the paperwork,” quipped Sgt. Charles (Chick) Nakamura, organizer of the bike team. “The captain (Sheriff’s Capt. Jay LaSuer) thinks it’s a hell of an idea just as long as we don’t get any complaints and we wear safety helmets.”

Sheriff’s Lt. Yolanda Collins, in charge of the Poway station while LaSuer is vacationing, said that, although it will take time to find out whether the bike team rides down crime, it already has shown evidence of building good will for the department.

“They are building up a lot of positive PR for us by going into neighborhoods where we seldom patrol,” she said. “People are very glad for their presence.”

The detectives began their outdoor duties last Monday, using a spotter with a hand-held radar unit who radioed instructions to the bicycle officers about which commuters to stop for speeding through school zones or rolling through student crosswalks. Then the team cruised the Green Valley area of Poway, where migrant workers have been reported extorting money from residents.

Nakamura, 41, said the idea of officers on bicycles is not new. San Diego uses bicycles for its beach patrols. Seattle and Tacoma also have established bike patrols, he said. In Boston, police often pursue suspects by bicycle through alleyways too narrow for patrol cars to negotiate, Nakamura said. One photograph that impressed Nakamura was of a Boston bike officer chasing a suspect down a flight of steps in a shopping center. “There’s very few places a bike can’t go,” he said.

Poway, called the “City in the Country,” is a bit too spread out to allow for foot patrolmen, so bike patrols are the next best way to show the flag, he said.

“We’ve been in neighborhoods where a lot of people never see a sheriff’s patrol unit unless there has been

trouble,” Nakamura said. “People came out of their houses and waved at us. The reception was very positive.”

The officers still must perform their indoor investigative duties, too, cutting their patrol activities down to a few hours a day.

“The captain wants to be sure that we had a good marriage here, that we could do both without it negatively affecting our assigned duties,” Nakamura said.

So far, the bike patrol consists of Nakamura, detectives Earle Lyons, Sal Navarro and Kevin Coughlin. Detective Dennis Brugos is acting as support man, driving the van which carries the bikes to the designated patrol area until he gets his own bicycle and gets up to speed on riding it, Nakamura said. A sixth detective at the Poway station may join, “after he loses about 40 pounds,” Nakamura said.

The officers all bought their own mountain bikes and equipment--a major expense because good lightweight mountain bikes cost from $550 to $800.

During its first week of action, Poway’s bike squad has been in training, operating only by daylight. All the officers wore their regulation Sheriff’s Department tunics, gun belts and weapons, which “causes a lot of drivers to do a double take after they pass us,” Nakamura said.

But, if the bike squad becomes a permanent part of the Poway contingent, Nakamura plans to make his team members less recognizable, dropping their insignia and hiding their weapons so that they can try to stem a rising number of night burglaries.

Poway has been hit by a burglary gang, one of the largest ever to operate in the county, as have El Cajon, Escondido, San Marcos and a number of San Diego suburbs. Two weeks ago, bicycle teams in other communities were able to catch several suspects. The roundup is continuing.

Nakamura wants the new bicycle team to be in on the kill when nocturnal burglars again start operating in Poway, because, he explained, “you can’t sneak up on a crime scene in a patrol unit. They see you or they hear you coming. Little towns like Ramona and even Poway become very quiet at night. You have to approach without making a sound. Bikes are the way to do it.”

He envisions a day when bike teams will patrol the night streets of Poway, swooping noiselessly through shopping centers, climbing hilly horse trails, cutting across the open fields in pursuit of their quarry.

“And they’ll never know we’re coming until we’ve caught them,” Nakamura said.