Hi,
This is my first post here, and after reading this thread, I thought it was a good place to start.
First, I am not a cop, but I ride with them in charity events (as police support) and, once a year, on a long cross country ride for the LLSA. The team I ride with is an outstanding group of officers, so I'll admit to being biased by my interaction with them. Most of them spend a great deal of time volunteering themselves for charity events and fundraising for the team. Even beyond that, they are one of the nicest groups of men and women I have ever met.
Base on this interaction, and based my experiences with having a lot of family members in law enforcement, I'll offer the following response to some opinions I read in this thread:
1)Bicycle Cops aren't good cyclists.
Okay, some of that is true SOMETIMES, but it doesn't work as a generalization. It's sort of like saying "cops are a__holes". Well, some are, but MOST are not. On my team are a couple of "real" bike cops, plus a lot of bike patrol officers ride with me on police support (like on the Houston to Austin MS150).
Like some of you, I am surprised sometimes that a few of these officers aren't very fit for long-distance cycling. However, in their defense, these are guys that most likely don't ride their bikes much, even at work, but simply work with bike patrol in another capacity. However, even these "slower" guys are amazingly fit. They have to take periodic PT exams and go to "bike school". Bike school, btw, is pretty tough.
They simply don't have the time for training for long distances. Some of them don't even have a good road bike, so they ride MTB's with knobbies, even on Century benefit rides. Having done that once myself on a dare, I can tell you it ain't easy to go fast the whole way. As an aside: Sometimes, when you see a officer riding really slow on a benefit, they could be riding "turtle"---simply riding very slow to time their crossing with the closing of the course. If the turtle passes a rider then that ride should sag up because "they ain't gonna make it". I rode turtle on the second day of a 212 mile 2 day ride. Let me tell ya, riding turtle on that ride was the toughest ride I've done. I started an hour late and stayed late at every stop. Still, ten hours on the road, riding under pace, was tough.
2) Bike Cops dont' follow the rules of the road.
Uh, I've never witnessed that (except in the case of a cop chasing down a guy on a benefit ride. The cop ran a red light and ran down a jerk who was riding on the wrong side of the street during a benefit tour. The guy, btw, was riding a nice road bike. The cop? A Cannondale MTB. The cop caught him--no problem.
Locally, Bike Patrol does ride in some areas off-limits to regular cyclists. Here, that includes the airport and airport terminals and some parks. However, even there, they are supposed to operate within guidelines. My guess is that they sometimes ride on sidewalks and in places they shouldn't, but that isn't common. Downtown, I wouldn't be surprised to see a cop on a sidewalk, especially if the streets are jammed and he is on a call, but I can say I've ridden with patrol downtown and we stopped at all the lights and stayed on the street full-time.
3)Bike Cops don't do much for cycling in general. This one is probably right, but only because Bike Patrol officers aren't that visible in a lot of cities. Here, they patrol on bike paths, often at night when they are closed to the public, or in the Ship Channel area, which is heavily industrialized, or in other areas like parks and ballfields, where they aren't that visible to the general public. I think the view is that it would be impractical for them to patrol in areas where patrol cars would be more effective.
4)Horses. Okay, this struck a nerve (Well, I AM from Texas). Horses are perfect for crowd control. I lived in New Orleans for ten years and I earn a great deal of respect for how a good cop on a good horse can control a crowd. In these circumstances, a cop on a bike or on foot would be ineffective.
I could post more on all this, but you guys would just get bored....
later!