Breaking Away Within LAPD

The cyclists focused hard on the afternoon’s riding exercise. Heads bobbing, teeth clenched and eyes often wide with fear, they labored down the steep, muddy trail, navigating a bone-crunching maze of rocks and ditches. Several crashed midway. Their knees bloodied and uniforms dusty, they carried their bikes back to the top of the incline and did it again.

“They don’t know what’s ahead of them. That’s what’s so great about it,” said Sgt. Vance Bjorkland, wearing a devilish grin. Bjorkland, an instructor at the Los Angeles Police Academy’s basic bicycle school, has been watching police officers fall off their bikes for almost two years now.

Shannon Alexander, who lost her balance and smacked into the rocky terrain, was one of the afternoon’s casualties. She walked the bicycle down, shaking out the pain in her beat-up legs.

“I was doing pretty decent until I hit that rock,” said a frustrated Alexander, 29.

Before bicycle patrol officers can catch any criminals, they must pedal through three days of strenuous training at the LAPD bike school in Elysian Park. Since 1990, the academy has offered the special course, and officers say bike detail has become a coveted form of policing.

About 250 LAPD officers work on bicycles, making it one of the nation’s largest non-motorized two-wheel forces. By contrast, about 50 to 75 officers in Chicago serve on bike patrol, according to Chicago Police Sgt. Jack Rimkus, and only a dozen or so pedal year-round.

Bike details are not new, but over the past two decades police departments have found them increasingly useful.

In Los Angeles, bike patrolling became part of the community-based policing package introduced in 1993. Its use has grown since then.

“Slowly, divisions are coming more on board,” said Officer Don Hudson, a bike patrol officer in the Central Division. He added that some divisions are still afraid to let officers patrol on bicycles at night.

Hudson, 46, wrote the bike academy program for the LAPD in 1990. He said that, at first, bike officers had an image of shaking hands with the public, but that now the department is finding them to be a good crime-fighting tool.

“It’s gonna stay,” said Craig White, lead instructor at the bicycle school. “It’s not a plaything, a toy, like people thought at first when they laughed at bike patrols.”

In fact, officials say there are plans to expand the training to five days. That way officers can learn how to use weapons immediately after dismounting and while still wearing bicycle gloves.

Reputed among officers to be a grueling experience, the training program has an injury rate that hovers around 15%, though most of the injuries are scraped knees or elbows, said Sgt. Bob Medkeff, a master instructor. The rigors of the class ensure that students become good, safe cyclists, learning maintenance, advanced gear shifting, balance and nutrition.

But the training entails much more than becoming competent at riding. Students must master how to brake and dismount at high speeds, jump curbs, climb two flights of stairs and pursue criminals while on a bike.

“The whole idea is to get them to learn to do police work on a bicycle,” Medkeff said. “It literally can be called the beat on wheels.”

Instructor White brings intensity and dedication to his role of preparing officers for their new beat. A senior lead officer in the Pacific Division, White has a cyclist’s trim, strong legs, covered with scars from years of crashes. He makes the recruits realize that on a bicycle they are more vulnerable than in a squad car.

“You don’t have a black and white to get through traffic anymore. You don’t have 3,000 pounds of car to protect you,” White, 49, reminded the officers. “It’s all yourself now.”

The recruits’ attire and equipment reveal the advantages and shortcomings of bike patrolling. They wear casual blue shirts and shorts, making them more approachable. But without cruisers, they lack tools other officers take for granted: sirens, computers for checking license plate numbers, shotguns and side handle batons. Instead, they carry smaller, collapsible batons on their belts.

“I had the big realization that I wasn’t the dark blue meanie anymore,” White recalled thinking when he first patrolled on bicycle 16 years ago. “I was more human.”

Along with the usual cycling safety equipment, the students wear bulletproof vests. White recalled how the vest helped one training officer during a freak accident. While he was riding, the officer’s handlebars fell off and the stem stabbed him in the chest.

“If something’s gonna happen, it’ll happen here,” White said of the training.

In fact, several students have been taken away by ambulance, but their injuries turned out to be minor, White said.

On the first day of class, 31 students, most in shorts, shivered in the early morning cold as they filed into the portable classroom at the academy. They would spend much of the next three days glued to their bicycle saddles, riding more than 60 miles.

White welcomed the recruits, who drank coffee and munched bagels.

“We’re not here to kill you. We’re not here to beat you up or torture you. None of that stuff you’ve heard in the past,” White announced in a comforting voice.

Still, the instructor gave them an honest idea of what lay ahead: “You’re gonna crash in this class. . . . It’s probably the hardest thing since the academy. In some cases, it’ll be harder than the academy.”

By afternoon, the students were on their bikes and practicing maneuvers in a large parking lot. Alexander, fair-skinned and freckled, tumbled to the concrete during a panic-stop exercise.

Soon afterward, Sgt. Will Griggs crashed. “It was my fault. I was trying to get too fancy.”

The oldest student, Griggs, a trim 49, decided to enroll after he took charge of the bicycle detail in the Southwest Division.

“I oughta lead by example,” he said. “Even though it’s tough, it’s fun . . . so far.”

Griggs wasn’t the only recruit initially struggling. Anthony Ortiz, 42, said he hadn’t ridden a bicycle in 22 years. Sweating profusely in the afternoon sun, he was also battling the flu.

“I’m here winging it with these young guys,” Ortiz said.

The next day the instructors and students rode to Griffith Park. After walking through the moist grounds, the students huddled around White.

“I want you to get serious out here,” said White, amid the smell of sweaty gloves.

“In other words, he wants us to crash,” Alexander said jokingly.

First the officers took turns riding down a long flight of stairs.

“You gotta keep some speed going. Speed can be your friend,” White said, encouragingly. Several officers seemed poised to careen out of control as they barreled down the steps, but none fell.

The officers also practiced pursuits. They performed a stealth maneuver in which two officers sandwich a suspect who is on foot. As one officer approaches a suspect from behind with handcuffs, another slides the bike in front of the suspect as a distraction.

“[Suspects] will almost run you down. They’ll run away from you,” instructor Monica Bess, a bicycle patrol officer in North Hollywood, told the students.

Bess spoke from experience. Last year, she chased a car through rush hour traffic as it ran multiple red lights. As Bess followed the reckless driver, another vehicle nearly struck her.

“I was so close to the [car] bumper, I could’ve put my foot on it,” recalled Bess.

Without their cruisers, bicycle patrol officers are more exposed to a variety of hazards: careless drivers, bad weather, potholes and dangerous criminals--and their weapons.

“You’re there with the elements,” said Joe Flores, who used to belong to North Hollywood’s bicycle unit. “The chances of a gangbanger taking you out from a car are pretty good.”

That’s almost what happened to Peter Foster, a Central Division bicycle officer who was shot in the back in August. Fortunately, he was wearing a bulletproof vest.

Yet bicycles also lend themselves to quieter crime-fighting strategies. Often, bike officers sneak up on lawbreakers.

On the last day of class, several officers’ arms and legs were marked with scabs and bruises. After a tiring run through a long obstacle course, featuring a fearsome downhill portion, they sat and traded war stories.

“Man, I thought I was gonna crash on the way down,” said Joe Montes.

“Everyone underestimates themselves,” Bess said. “The class pushes you to do things you think you couldn’t do.”

Usually one or two officers don’t cut it, White said. This time around, everyone passed.