The bicycle patrol is back.
After about a 10-year hiatus, the Conway Police Department has four officers on its new crime-suppression team. In August, the officers strapped on their helmets, climbed on bicycles and hit the streets and walking trails.
Police Chief Jody Spradlin said the officers have a dual purpose.
“One of their main roles is, obviously, on bicycles to be able to patrol our bike paths and walking paths in the city that have relatively gone untouched for many years. Now those guys can get out there and make it a little bit safer,” Spradlin said. “They’ll also be in neighborhoods making contact with residents, seeing what’s going on in the neighborhoods.
“We have like 5 1/2 miles of bike paths through the city now. That’s a potential target for people on their bikes, or who are walking or jogging, and we can’t get a patrol car down there. It’s just an area that’s just gone unpatrolled for so long. We’re getting a lot of positive feedback from people who use the bike trails that they enjoy seeing us out there, and I think it makes them feel a little more safe when they’re out there.”
University of Central Arkansas senior Caleb Duerkop of Cabot was running on the Tucker Creek Walking Trail on a recent morning. He said he runs three to four times a week on the trail.
Duerkop, a political science major and a member of ROTC, said he wasn’t aware of the new patrol. He said being on the trail doesn’t bother him in the daytime.
“At night, it can get creepy,” he said. “There are a lot of neighborhoods here, and people can enter wherever.”
Shortly after Duerkop left the trail, three of the four crime-suppression-unit members pulled into the trailhead on Salem Road in a police Tahoe and unloaded their bicycles from the rack.
The officers — patrolmen Dellwyn Elkins, J.P. Bolling and Todd Wesbecher — were wearing bicycle shorts on this unseasonably warm November day, but they said they plan to order bicycle pants and jackets for the winter. Lt. Gene Hodges, who leads the team, was on vacation.
The unit is based out of the same Pine Street Substation as a decade before, and the officers are riding the same Trek police bicycles the original team rode. The bicycles, which were still in good shape, were given a tune-up before they hit the streets.
The officers carry a small pack on their bicycles that includes a first-aid kit, bike-repair items, stickers and bracelets for children, and extra ammunition for their pistols, Elkins said.
Spradlin said the original bike unit ended in the early- to mid-2000s when the Police Department reorganized because of a manpower shortage.
“It was more of a community policing-type unit then,” he said.
Lt. Bob Berry, who retired in June after 28 1/2 years of service, spent two years on the first bicycle patrol. In addition to being an undercover officer in the narcotics division, he was part of the community policing team.
He said the bicycles were purchased with a donation from Conway banker Johnny Allison.
“Conway loved it,” Berry said. “We would ride — this is no kidding — in our uniform with all our gear on, 20 miles a day. It was probably one of the best tools we had. Seven of us handled all the problem areas. Ladies would be jogging at midnight and see us out and say, ‘We’re so glad you’re out here.’ They were tickled to see us.”
Berry said he’s happy to see the bicycle patrol making a comeback.
“I think it’s the best tool the PD could ever use because it not only lets the officers and citizens talk to each other and see each other; you don’t have a car there in between you. You can also hear things better being on a bicycle than in a vehicle,” he said.
Hodges emphasized that the purpose of the four-member bike patrol is to be proactive.
The unit is “intelligence driven,” he said, and tries to prevent incidents before they happen, not just respond. For example, he may spend time in an unmarked vehicle watching a house whose occupants are suspected of selling drugs.
“You don’t want to be like other cities that have allowed these problems to become more aggressive,” Hodges said.
“We’ve been trying to start this team back for several years; it’s just been manpower issues,” Hodges said, echoing the chief. “We kind of do a little bit of everything. We have the advantage of not having to go on call to call.”
He said base shifts have 14 officers, two sergeants and a lieutenant.
“They are so overwhelmed with call numbers … it’s hard to be proactive,” Hodges said. “We try to spend at least a couple of hours a day on the bike trails, depending on the weather. We have spent six to eight hours at night [on our bicycles].”
The crime-suppression-unit officers go on many calls for service in their vehicles, but they are free to pick and choose, unlike the base shifts, who must respond to each call for service, Hodges said.
Spradlin said flexibility is one of the advantages the bicycle patrol officers have. They will go on calls in their vehicles, if the incident is close, but they can be directed to specific problem areas.
“If we have an uptick in car break-ins or burglaries, we can take this team and concentrate them and help reduce the crime that’s being committed there,” Spradlin said.
Hodges praised Spradlin and Mayor Bart Castleberry for supporting the team. He said former Conway Police Chief A.J. Gary also talked about bringing back the bike patrol, but the manpower was not available.
Hodges said that first, the officers had to get conditioned to riding.
“I probably hadn’t been on a bike since 2000,” Hodges said. “And it was August.”
Elkins, who volunteered for the unit, said he hadn’t ridden a bike in years, either.
“It’s turned out pretty great,” he said. “We’re getting on the trails a couple of hours a day and riding the neighborhoods. When we’re not on our bicycles, we’re getting in cars and making stops. We’re trying to be a little bit more than the bike squad.”
Elkins said the officers are getting pulled in different directions, which is the “fun and hard part” of the job. “We’ve kind of got to make a name for ourselves. A lot of our enforcement stuff while we’ve been on the unit hasn’t been on bicycles. In the summer, we were talking to people in neighborhoods,” he said.
The bicycle-patrol officers attend block parties and special events in the city to let people see law enforcement in a more relaxed setting, not just when they’re stopped for a traffic violation.
Bolling described the bicycle patrol as a “problem-solving unit.”
The bottom line is, “we hope to catch more people committing crimes,” Bolling said. “We can sneak up on them. We can turn our light off, and they never see or hear us coming.”
Maj. Chris Harris, who is over patrol for the Conway
Police Department, said officers on bicycles are a perfect way to patrol apartment complexes and neighborhoods.
“Most of the time, you’ll see from security cameras, somebody will pull up and walk down the street checking car doors,” Harris said. “A street may be however long — you can see a Tahoe coming pretty far.”
With the holiday shopping season underway, the officers said they’ll patrol shopping-center parking more often to keep an eye out for thieves.
“Fortunately, right now, and knock on wood — our crime stats are down,” Spradlin said.
As of Oct. 31, 2016, the number of violent crimes for the year was 230; through Oct. 31, 2017, that number had dropped to 214, a 7 percent decrease.
Property crimes during the same time period dropped 19 percent, from 2,391 to 1,936 incidents.
The chief said the bicycle patrol is too new to have contributed to the decrease, but he believes it will make a difference.
Harris said not a lot of crime is committed on the bike trails, but there are robberies and drug deals that occur.
The walking/bike trails that wind through the city don’t have an address associated with them, so the reporting system doesn’t have a way to track which reports originate from incidents on the trails, Harris said.
Hodges keeps statistics on the crime-suppression unit. They show that in the period from the first of August to early November, the crime-suppression unit made 140 arrests, including 50 drug arrests; seized nine guns; issued 192 warnings; and made 248 assists to other officers.
The bike trails also provide an escape route for individuals who have committed crimes, Harris said.
“If somebody commits a crime, it’s an easier access to leave and go down the bike trail,” Harris said. “It’s hard to hide if officers are on a bicycle.”
Steve Ibbotson, director of Conway Parks and Recreation, said he supports the patrol — anything to make those hidden areas safer.
Hodges said the ultimate goal would be to expand the unit to include him, a sergeant and six to eight officers. “That’s going to take time,” he said.
During one of the first patrols they made on a walking trail, Hodges said, the officers saw three young girls riding alone on their bicycles. He estimated that they ranged in ages from 8 to 12 years old.
“I told the officers, ‘That’s one of the reasons you need to be out here,’” he said. “Our mere presence may keep something from happening.”
Senior writer Tammy Keith can be reached at (501) 327-0370 or tkeith@arkansasonline.com.