NCJ Number
199284
Journal
Law Enforcement Technology Volume: 30 Issue: 2 Dated: February 2003 Pages: 32,34,37
Date Published
February 2003
Length
5 pages
Annotation
This article describes the implementation of the Los Angeles Police Department’s (LAPD) Bicycle Coordination Unit (BCU).
Abstract
In 1990, the first structured bicycle training program for the LAPD was developed as police agencies nation-wide began to discover the value of bicycle patrol units. By 1995, all 18 patrol divisions of the LAPD were required to have at least 1 bicycle unit. In 1998, the LAPD developed their first Bicycle Coordination Unit (BCU), with three officers at its helm. The officers identified three areas of concern that needed to be addressed in order to develop the BCU into a professional, effective police patrol unit: bicycles and equipment needed to be standardized, repairs needed to be handled in a timely and professional manner, and a police bicycle school was necessary for officers. The author describes how each of these three areas of concern was improved upon, beginning with standardizing their bicycles and equipment. Before the BCU was developed, bicycle patrol officers were required to provide their own bicycles. This resulted in a wide discrepancy in the quality of bicycles used by officers. Many break downs convinced those in charge that bicycles should be standardized and provided by the LAPD. Second, the officers found that repairs were not timely and often unacceptable in quality. As such, the LAPD established good working relationships with bicycle repair shops that provided timely, quality repairs. Finally, a training program was established with an expert officer who had worked with bicycles since the 1970's. The result, is an efficiently functioning bicycle patrol unit that was responsible for 6,000 arrests during a 12 month period.