Simi Valley Council to Discuss Proposal for Police Bike Patrol : Spending: Plan costing $7,600 would cover assorted gear. Residential areas and shopping centers would be targeted.

Hoping to increase the interaction between police and the public, the Simi Valley City Council tonight will consider starting a police bicycle patrol.

“This gets the police out closer to the people, and I think that’s really always good,” Mayor Greg Stratton said. “The bike makes an excellent compromise between the obvious slowness of walking and the speed of a police car.”

Police Chief Lindsey P. Miller said he supports the enforcement tool, which he said offers many benefits over cars and motorcycles. The cities of Oxnard and Ventura already have similar bike patrols.

“It’s another tool in our bag of tricks,” Miller said. “Bicycles offer high mobility in certain kinds of areas. The other factor is that when you’re inside a car, you’re really insulated and a lot of times just the motor noise prevents you from hearing something you might otherwise hear.”

The council will consider a plan to spend $7,600 to buy five mountain bikes, uniforms and other equipment at its meeting beginning at 6:30 p.m. in City Hall, 2929 Tapo Canyon Road.

Councilman Bill Davis said he generally supports the idea of bicycle patrols but will wait until tonight’s meeting to determine if it is a program to which the city should devote thousands of dollars.

“That appears to me to be a whole bunch of money, and I’m just wondering about the expense,” he said. “I’d kind of like to have the Police Department explain it to me in person.”

Ventura Police Sgt. Carl Handy, who supervises his department’s 3-month-old bicycle patrol, said it has been a success.

“When you’re on a bicycle, it’s a little stealthier; it also allows us to get into some of the more hard-to-get-around areas,” Handy said. “It’s particularly attuned to high-density areas.”

In Simi Valley, the bicycle patrol would be used in residential areas and shopping centers, the Arroyo Simi flood control channel, and on existing bicycle and equestrian paths, city officials said.

The enforcement effort is expected to be an effective way of combatting graffiti since many areas prone to graffiti vandalism are inaccessible to cars or motorcycles, officials said. The five-officer bicycle unit could also be used for low-noise burglary surveillance or other investigations.

“Clearly, the fact that the (officers) will be going slower and can get into places that they couldn’t before makes the things they’re looking at a lot different than when they’re driving by,” Stratton said.

And while he has not yet decided whether to endorse the plan, Davis, a former officer in the Culver City Police Department, said he knows firsthand how valuable it can be to get officers out of their cars and into the community.

“Forty years ago, I used to walk beats in Culver City and I enjoyed that. You were close to people and you had a good rapport with the kids,” Davis said. “You need to be close to the public; you need to assure the public that you’re a human being and not some mechanical thing in a blue uniform riding around in a car.”