randya

A Portland Police Bureau Sergeant who was riding his bike into work yesterday morning was involved in an altercation with a man driving a car that has resulted in the driver being arrested for hit and run and attempted assault.

Busted!

Larry Fornshell's booking photo

Full Story: https://bikeportland.org/2011/03/23/o...nto-work-50107

The cops do tend to look out for their own....

B. Carfree

Sergeant Santos, my new hero.

FlatSix911

I want to see a photo of the bike ...

Digital_Cowboy

The sad thing is that as some of the comments had said is that if Mr. Santos was a civilian instead of cop that probably nothing or next to nothing would have been done to the driver. And that the cyclist is the one who would have been cited for slapping the car.

In cases like this it shouldn't matter who the cyclist is, all that should matter is that a cyclist was assaulted. Either with the drivers vehicle as a weapon, or by the driver. If it's assault it's assault no matter who the victim is.

DX-MAN

DC, you're 100% right... but we both know how far that goes up the scale of "who cares?" As long as people measure a fellow traveler's worth by horsepower, we are gonna be off the back.

Don in Austin

I agree with the above, still glad to see this guy get nailed in any case.

Don in Austin

Profgumby

Agreed!

Digital_Cowboy

Yep, until we get the same number of cyclists on the road as in Europe, Asia, and the rest of the world we'll always be treated as a second class (or worse) citizen.

The sad thing is also that cases like that "good" doctor out in LA are actually flukes. But one has to be as brazen as that "good" doctor was before anyone will sit up and take notice and do what's right.

Yes it is, hopefully he'll think twice about assaulting another cyclist. Hopefully others in Portland will also think twice before assaulting a cyclist.

I also liked the comment from one of the people who posted who said what we've said hundreds IF not thousands of times. That is that people like Mr. Fornstall should not only have their license taken, but should be made to ride a bicycle for transportation.

Also as we've said before as part of the requirement to get a drivers license people should have to ride a bicycle as transportation. I'd say for at least a year so that they can get a real feel for what it is that cyclists have to deal with on a daily basis.

Thank you all. It was also nice to see so many of the commenters standing up for cyclist rights. I wonder how many of them are full time drivers and how long their conviction will last when they're on the road behind a "slow" cyclist who is causing them to be "late?"

John E

Great story, great thread -- thanks for posting.

Looigi

Cruel and inhuman punishment..

DX-MAN

"Also as we've said before as part of the requirement to get a drivers license people should have to ride a bicycle as transportation. I'd say for at least a year so that they can get a real feel for what it is that cyclists have to deal with on a daily basis." -- Digital Cowboy

Better yet, DC, one month out of EVERY year!

K'Tesh

Hit and Run? They should be made to ride the bike underwater, without the benefit of breathing apparatus.

Digital_Cowboy

That works, and the license renewal process should be more than just sending in a check for their renewal fees. They should at the very least have to take a written test to renew their license. So that they know the changes to the law. If they were involved in a crash or gotten any ticket more serious than a parking ticket they should have to also take a new road test in order to renew their license.

There's an idea, or we could replace their handlebars with Pain Sticks. ;-)

genec

Oh the irony... that this thread pops up while the Conflicts are Rare thread is still around.
https://www.bikeforums.net/showthread...licts-are-Rare

Sure conflicts are rare, but when they reach this level of intensity... sure would be nice to have a bunch of cop buddies out there to enforce the laws for us two wheelers.

billdsd

Driver accused of trying to run down Portland officer

genec

I wonder if this will change any attitudes on the PPB... when other cyclists make similar claims.

Digital_Cowboy

One can hope.

B. Carfree

Just be sure to file your report with Sgt. Santos and I'm sure you will get a sympathetic ear.

Down here in Eugene, the cops will only ride bikes under two conditions:
1.) they are on patrol in uniform, mostly riding on bike paths and sidewalks.
2.) they go out in a group with a uniform in front and behind. They find it too dangerous to ride alone (yes, a cop who cycles told me this).

randya

Actually, it's great to know a cop you can talk to or file incident reports with for issues like cyclist harassment; and if police departments were serious about clamping down on harassment of cyclists they would specifically assign an officer to this task and make his contact info known to the cycling community.

I used to have a contact like this in PPB back in the 90s and a reasonably detailed incident report with a vehicle license number, driver description and details of the incident would at a minimum get the registered vehicle owner a phone call with a lecture and a warning from the officer.

B. Carfree

You're absolutely right. It would be great if police departments would assign a few officers to deal with attacks on cyclists. They could probably multiply their effectiveness by utilizing the scores of willing volunteers among the cycling community for sting-type operations. At least many officers in PDX will likely now believe this sort of thing happens, since it happened to one of their own.

cppb

+1 When I have reported the license plate # of a driver who threw a full beer can at me from a car to the police, they literally did nothing. They claimed that because I didn't have a description of the driver they couldn't do anything. Even though it takes approximately 10 minutes of police work to find the driver's address and ask him, "who was driving your car on this date?" I didn't really expect an arrest for a no-injuy assault (although I bet if I had done the same thing in a bar there would be handcuffs and paperwork involved), but a phone call from the police would have been nice.

More recently, a friend of mine was knocked into a ditch by a guy leaning out of a car window. The responding officer asked, "why did he do it?" and seemed like he had no clue that people harassed cyclists. Maybe if one of his co-workers had been assualted he wouldn't have been so surprised.

Feldman

Yeah, but still there's one more driver who will probably give cyclists more room--never know who's carrying a badge, you know!

rumrunn6

cops should ride undercover along popular bike commute routes

mnemia

I've wondered why they don't do this for awhile (maybe logistically difficult, since making a stop might require radioing ahead if they can't catch them?). It would be a really good way to identify the most aggressive and/or inattentative drivers on the road. Getting them off the road would benefit motorists as well as cyclists, because I'd bet a lot of them are aggressive towards other motorists, too.

TysonC

Wow, again a thread involving a HNR getting his due and you guys still find some negativity in it.

How about, "Awesome! The HNR got caught and there's a cop that commutes via bike. Super cool!".

And the reason a lot of cops don't ride commute routes/mups is that the departments are already stretched thin (the vast majority of LE agencies are 50 officers or less - look up the Dept of Justice stats). Most of you really have no idea how much work LEO's actually do. Besides, I know quite a few LEO's around these parts that drive (very slowly) the MUPS at night.