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Bike-along with cops
7/28/2010 10:26:13 AM
By Hope Brumbach
Splash Editor
The two Liberty Lake police officers perched on a grassy knoll near the intersection, bikes at the ready.
"Hey, there's one right there," Sergeant Clint Gibson called out, pointing to a vehicle slowing to a stop at the traffic light at Liberty Lake Road and Country Vista Drive. The driver didn't have his seatbelt fastened.
The second officer, Mark Van Hyning, rolled down the knoll on his mountain bike, zipped alongside the vehicle and yelled, "Hey, police."
On his bike, Van Hyning herded the car around the corner onto Liberty Lake Road and parked his bike behind the vehicle, which had pulled over to the curb.
It proved a productive stop. When the driver rolled down his window, Van Hyning smelled marijuana. With the driver's permission, the officer searched the vehicle and found a glass drug pipe wedged between the passenger and driver's seats, a misdemeanor offense. Advertisement
While the officer talked to him about the pipe, the 18-year-old driver slumped on a curb behind his car; a male passenger hovered nearby.
"If I have a green card, it's OK, right?" the driver asked, referring to the pipe. "Why don't you stop talking, homie?" chided his passenger.
"You can't possess marijuana. Period," Gibson told him.
The officers cited him for not wearing his seatbelt and gave him paperwork for a court date for the drug offense.
"I shouldn't have come out here," said the driver, a Spokane resident.
"Tell your friends this isn't the place to do dope," Van Hyning said. "We are beyond committed to our community."
That was the first stop of the day last week, when Van Hyning and Gibson, two of the four certified bike officers in Liberty Lake, took to the roads on their mountain bikes for an afternoon of two-wheeled patrol duty. During the Thursday afternoon shift, The Splash rode along.
Bike officer programs have spiked in popularity around the country with the increased focus on community-oriented policing. Liberty Lake's program started pedaling in 2004. Since then, officers patrol once or twice a week on bikes, from May through September.
The program, Sergeant Gibson said, offers the opportunity to interact with the community on the ground level, with two to three times as many contacts compared to a patrol car.
Bike officers also have the advantage of stealth approach and heightened awareness because they can see, hear - and even smell - more than when in a patrol car, Gibson said. Plus, it's fun, he added.
"We're able to see and be more observant when we're on a mountain bike because we're not caged in with a patrol car," Gibson said. "We're able to roll into things more easily on a bike than in a car, because people don't expect to have a police officer on a bike."
Last Thursday, Gibson and Van Hyning focused on spotting traffic violations that would lead to the discovery of other, more serious offenses. They slowly rolled through the Albertsons parking lot on Liberty Lake Road, looking for suspicious behavior.
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Reporter's Notebook About the bike-along
When Police Chief Brian Asmus returned my phone message inquiring about a bike-along, he laughed. Are you going to ride on the handlebars, he asked over the phone.
I understood his amusement: I'm more than six months pregnant, so it likely wasn't a request he expected. Still, the chief and his officers welcomed me to bike along.
As a regular road bike rider, I borrowed a mountain bike from a friend in anticipation of bumping over curbs and cutting through grass. It was a good choice, I found.
Last Thursday, we set out from the police department in windy, sunny weather with the threat of a dust storm lazing on the horizon. We stationed our bikes on the north side of Country Vista Drive and watched cars drive by.
I could hardly see through some drivers' windows, but the officers spotted a teenager without his seatbelt.
Our first catch of the day! The thrill surprised me.
The stop netted a drug pipe. The driver of the vehicle sat on the curb as I scribbled notes and snapped photos and the officers searched his car. Don't talk to her, Van Hyning told the driver sternly. I appreciated his concern.
After the driver left, I was ready for more.
I had planned to stay out two hours. Two easily melted into almost four, with nearly constant action. The officers pulled over multiple drivers, giving some warnings, while others resulted in arrests and releases. After each traffic stop, the officers briefed me on their findings and some of their strategies.
When we cruised by Starbucks, Van Hyning stopped to talk to a group of kids. He gave a girl on a bike a sticker and coupon for free ice cream, commending her for wearing a helmet. He offered the same to the girl's friend, securing a promise that she would wear a helmet next time.
At the end of the day, I reluctantly headed back to the office.
When we pedaled through the parking lot of the library, located in the same building as the police department, a van pulled out from a handicap parking spot. No handicap sticker or plate decal was in sight.
Can we bust them, I asked excitedly. The officers laughed. Not this time, they said.
That's too bad, I said. I wasn't ready for my bike-along to be over.
– Hope Brumbach
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"We don't patrol in neighborhoods much," Gibson said of the bike shift. "We're looking for results."
During one stop in the parking lot, an observer leaned against his truck and flicked a lit cigarette on the ground, watching the officers interact with another driver.
"You're not going to litter right in front of the police, are you?" Van Hyning said to the observer. "You're going to pick that up, right?"
The man slowly scooped the burning stub from the ground.
The bike officers also planted themselves at intersections - often near Liberty Lake Road and Country Vista and then Liberty Lake Road and Appleway Avenue - where traffic naturally comes to a stop. That way, they can avoid chasing down cars.
One drawback of being on a bike is getting from "point A to point B very fast," Gibson said. But bike officers also maneuver places that cars can't, such as the local trail system, parks and between houses.
On Thursday, the pair pedaled between and through lanes of traffic. Similar to a patrol car, bike officers don't have to obey traffic laws when it's needed for their work.
Van Hyning spotted a small truck driven by a man with his seatbelt under his arm. He pumped his bike across Liberty Lake Road and caught the truck after it turned into the Safeway parking lot.
Gibson wheeled in behind. The driver searched in the glove box and under his seat, but couldn't produce proof of insurance. Van Hyning cited him for it, as well as failing to properly wear his seatbelt.
Drivers without insurance irk him, Van Hyning said. If that driver gets in an accident with someone with limited insurance, lives will forever be changed, he added.
Oftentimes on bike duty, officers will slowly cruise through parking lots and along busy roadways, but they also will sprint after moving vehicles. It requires an officer to be fit, Gibson said, especially with the roughly 20 pounds of equipment and full police gear.
Bike officers bring everything they would normally need in a patrol car: ticket books, maps, tools, handcuffs, baton, gun, Taser and more. They wear a Kevlar vest under their police uniform, which often is made from a breathable material and can zip off into shorts.
When running license plates, bike officers call dispatch for help from radios strapped to their shoulders. They also typically have a patrol car on duty as backup.
Even if a driver decided to split - which no one has so far in Liberty Lake - the officers have a record of their license plate and description, Gibson said.
In the last few years of bike patrol, Gibson said the department has made some significant arrests.
Two years ago, an older minivan drove by the bike cops, and "you could smell alcohol rolling out of the minivan," Gibson said. When the officers pulled it over near Walgreens, they spotted the butt end of a gun. It turned out to be an assault rifle with a loaded magazine - and ended in a felony arrest.
On other occasions, they arrested a drug dealer in the McDonald's parking lot, caught a man smoking cocaine in a handicap parking spot near Albertsons and nabbed a DUI golf cart driver on Liberty Lake Community Yard Sale day.
On one of the last stops of the day last week, the bike officers contacted the driver of a sports utility vehicle in the Albertsons parking lot after running the plates and discovering the registered owner had a suspended license.
The driver told police he just acquired the vehicle and hadn't changed ownership on it. Van Hyning recognized the man from previous contacts. The man had a history of driving under the influence and is required to use an ignition interlock device on his vehicle. The SUV didn't have one.
"I just got it," the man protested.
"That's why they call it driving privileges," Van Hyning said. The man was arrested and released.
After receiving his court date paperwork, he shook the officers' hands. His passenger, who had a valid driver's license, drove the pair away.
"Our main goal," Gibson said, "is to modify behavior."
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