Bikes and Badges : Inglewood Police Patrol Uses Stealth to Chalk Up More Than 50 Arrests, Tickets in First 2 Weeks

Inglewood police Officers Rick Freeman and John Barrow are cruising along Tamarack Avenue near Buckthorn Street on an afternoon so hot that the sweat seems to boil beneath their bulletproof vests.

Without saying a word, the two partners suddenly and simultaneously cut their cruising speed and drift to the right, hugging a line of parked cars. They dart across the asphalt intersection and stop in front of a van, where a startled group of people are loitering--and one man is drinking in public.

It all goes down in seconds, a combination of street savvy and stealth that could only be accomplished, the officers say, on bicycles.

“Even when they know we’re out here, they don’t see us coming,” said Freeman of Inglewood’s new police bike patrol, which has been in existence for a little more than two weeks and already has chalked up more than 50 arrests and citations.

The new bike patrol, which consists of four specially trained officers on special black and white police bikes, spends 10 hours a day, four days a week pedaling all over Inglewood. Crisscrossing streets, climbing sidewalks, jetting in and out of alleys, carports and parking lots, the bike-riding officers get to places that police in patrol cars never see.

Inglewood is one of a growing number of Southland cities--a group that includes Burbank, Hermosa Beach, Sun Valley, Los Angeles, North Hollywood, Oxnard in Ventura County and Costa Mesa and Santa Ana in Orange County--that have put officers on bikes. The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department also has deployed a bike patrol in Lennox.

In Inglewood, all four members of the bike patrol usually ride together, two on each side of the street. This afternoon, however, it is just Freeman and Barrow. Their biking companions are on vacation.

The two officers give one of the men hanging around the van a citation for drinking in public and confiscate a wooden club before mounting their bikes again. In an alley a block away, Freeman pitches the club into a large trash bin.

Moving south through the city along busy Prairie Avenue, the officers pedal by carnicerias, lavanderias and dilapidated trailer parks where the clucking of chickens can be heard.

Clad in shorts, helmets and white T-shirts that say POLICE front and back, they each carry about 24 pounds of equipment including a lightweight baton and flashlight. In all, it cost the department just under $10,000 to train and equip the four-member patrol.

As the officers pedal past, many bystanders and shopkeepers are surprised to see police on bicycles. Others, having gotten used to the patrols, wave or shout out a friendly hello, delighted to see police on their streets and out of patrol cars.

“One of the chief values (of the patrol) is in public relations,” said Dennis Purcell, its sergeant.

That is why, for example, Freeman and Barrow stop to pet a frisky, buff-colored cocker spaniel named Blade. It pleases the dog’s young owner, a grinning, bespectacled boy of about 10 standing on the sidewalk with a group of other youngsters.

The bike patrol, however, is part of the Police Department’s anti-crime team, a group that also includes undercover narcotics officers. Crime fighting is still the bike patrol’s main job, and stealth is its main weapon.

“Seldom seen, never heard” has become its motto, Purcell said.

One suspect whom Freeman and Barrow arrested said later that he would have run if he had realized the two men approaching him on bicycles were police officers. He said he thought they were “Mormon Bible salesmen.”

Around 111th Street, Freeman and Barrow pause to explain that they will be cutting across the traffic, making a beeline for a parking lot frequented by crack dealers.

“We don’t go there every day,” Barrow explained. “They don’t know when we’re coming.”

Finding the lot free of dope, the officers continue south toward Imperial Highway, where late afternoon traffic whizzes past empty inner-city lots.

Again, the officers stop to give a citation to a man drinking in public. Seeing the officers, a man in a blue pickup truck stops at the curb. He wants Freeman and Barrow to accompany him a block away to the carwash he owns, where he says he has found a trail of blood.

“They do that, we’re so visible out here,” Freeman said of the man’s request. “People stop and tell us things. Maybe they’ll say, ‘Hey, we just saw two guys pushing a stolen car around the corner.’ ”

Following the blood stains across the street to a nearby apartment house, Freeman and Barrow, via radio contact with headquarters, determine that hours earlier someone with a badly cut foot had been transported by paramedics to a hospital for stitches. The officers return to the carwash to tell the owner, Carl Silkey.

“How long are you going to be out here?” Silkey asked. When told that the patrol is permanent, Silkey said, “I’m tickled to death.”

For small-business owners, police patrols are a welcome sight. Farther along Imperial, in front of a coin laundry filled with women and children, Freeman and Barrow find three young men sprawled in the middle of the sidewalk drinking malt liquor out of 40-ounce bottles.

The officers make the men pour the liquor onto the asphalt parking lot and give all three citations for drinking in public.

“You see all these little kids out here,” Freeman said gently to one of the young men. “You’re creating a bad image for them.”

“If you take the time to look at our more serious crimes, you’ll see they start with drugs and alcohol first,” Barrow said.

Later, during a rest stop, Freeman analyzed the patrol’s first two weeks. “We had nothing but positive contact since we’ve been out here,” he said.

As if on cue, the two officers, later pedaling their bikes down an alley, get a welcome greeting.

From an iron staircase, high above them on the side of an apartment building, a man calls out to the bikers below: “Good to see you out here.”