Pumped Up for Bike Duty : Glendale Class Prepares Police, Paramedics for 2-Wheel Patrol

Lesson 1 heard by attentive students in the Glendale Police Department’s briefing room: Just say no to “double-doubles,” fries and chocolate shakes.

Instead, agent Darrell York told the 25 men and women in the department’s Bicycle Patrol Training School, eat a big bowl of pasta and drink plenty of water prior to an eight-hour shift on two wheels.

The nutrition lesson was one of the first in the three-day course this week designed to train Southern California police officers, security personnel and paramedics--particularly from Glendale and Burbank--how to perform their duties on a bicycle.

“We can get in and out of buildings and alleys,” said Officer David Buckley, citing one advantage of arriving at a crime scene on a bike rather than in a patrol car. “We can catch possible drug dealings or thefts in progress.”

This week’s class is the third for the Glendale department, according to Sgt. James Fitzgerald of the department’s bicycle unit.

The 25 students included six officers from the Glendale Police Department and officers from Burbank, L.A. Port Police, security personnel from the Glendale Galleria and paramedics from Med-Trans.

“Public relations is one of the advantages,” said Fitzgerald about bike policing. “We don’t seem to intimidate [the public] when we’re on a bicycle.”

Fitzgerald said his department is catching the wave of the future.

Modern on-duty officers first mounted bicycles in Seattle, Fitzgerald said. Since then, other departments, such as Los Angeles, Glendale, Burbank and Monrovia have caught on to the trend for various reasons.

One is financial, said Fitzgerald.

A fully equipped patrol car costs $25,000-$26,000, he said. But a bike costs about $1,000.

Glendale already has 50 officers trained, Fitzgerald said, and the department’s goal is to train the 250-strong force so all are certified for bikes.

The course offers instruction in proper nutrition, bike riding--including how to ride down flights of stairs while chasing a suspect, and 15-mile endurance rides at Griffith Park and in the Burbank foothills--and emphasizes the importance of public relations.

“When was the last time someone walked up to the paramedics just to talk?” said David Givot, a Glendale Med-Trans paramedic in the class who already has had some experience working from two wheels. “When you’re on a bike they want to talk about hockey scores in a positive, totally stress-free way.”

But the bikes aren’t bad as crime-fighting tools, either, some officers said.

Officers can move through crowds quickly and pursue criminals to places where cars can’t follow.

Fitzgerald said that although officers who work on bikes can’t cover large areas, they still have an arrest-rate four to five times higher than their car-patrol counterparts because they are able to cover their beat in more detail.

Said Officer Keith Soboleski, who works in Glendale’s anti-gang unit: “The stealth part comes into it. You can go in the park and sneak up on [potential criminals].”