Police Bike Patrols Getting a Real Charge From Donor

It usually takes Sgt. Steve Whalen and his bike team a few minutes to catch their breath after pedaling hard on a call.

Now, with a gift of 10 electric bicycles, Whalen hopes that responding won’t leave them too winded.

“You ride hard and expend a lot of energy when going to a scene,” he said. “But with these bikes, we will have an advantage. I don’t think we’ll be that tired.”

The Anaheim Police Department and five other Orange County police departments can thank an anonymous donor for their new EV (electric vehicle) Warrior bicycles. The two-wheelers can be pedaled like a normal bike but also can have the power switched on and travel at speeds of about 20 mph.

The agencies picked up the bikes last month at the Southern California Edison warehouse in Alhambra after the donor asked Edison to help give the bikes away, said Catherine Scudder, an Edison project manager who arranged the distribution. Huntington Beach and Orange got six; Brea received five; and La Palma and Seal Beach each got two.

Scudder said 237 bikes were given to about 30 police agencies in Southern California and 145 to community and youth groups. Police agencies applied for the bikes, which were distributed according to the cities’ populations.

The Warrior bike retails for about $2,000, weighs 80 pounds and is powered by two batteries that straddle the rear wheel. The bike can travel about 25 miles between charges; recharging takes about three hours.

The six-speed bikes come with front and rear turn signals, brake lights, a horn and, on some, an alarm system.

The bikes were manufactured by Malcolm Bricklin’s Electric Bicycle Co. of Burbank, which went bankrupt and was liquidated last year.

The bikes look different from a generic mountain bike, said Sgt. Rueben Hernandez, Brea’s bike team coordinator.

“They are heavier and longer,” he said. “But once you get over the look, they are easy to operate and fun to ride.”

The Brea Police Department, like other Orange County agencies that received the bicycles, has yet to put them into use.

“We are going to train our officers first and determine where they will be used,” Hernandez said. His department may use the bikes in downtown, park and surveillance patrols.

The Anaheim department is considering using the bikes for community-policing, gang and patrol bike teams, Whalen said.

Whalen sees some disadvantages in the bike. Its weight requires more energy to move around--the mountain bikes usually used by police departments weigh between 25 and 30 pounds. And the 30-pound batteries on the electric bike might not handle going up and down the curbs or stairs that bike patrols frequently encounter.

But the bike has some advantages. When the motor runs, it is silent, a feature Whalen said is important for some night and surveillance work.

In Huntington Beach, officers are slowly getting familiar with their new bikes. Police have assembled two bikes; the rest are still in boxes.

“We’ve been running them in the parking lot but have yet to see how they work elsewhere,” Capt. Patrick Gildea said.

“The only problem so far is that we had to buy new batteries because the batteries that came with the bikes were two years expired,” he said.

Still, the department plans to add the bikes to downtown, beach, park and neighborhood patrols later this year.

“They are nice little bikes,” Gildea said. “At $2,000 each, they are not a bad Christmas gift.”