IPMBA's Annual Police on Bikes Conference features an excellent mix of on-bike and classroom sessions presented by experts from around the country. On-bike sessions include basic, intermediate and advanced bicycle handling skills, firearms skills, bike patrol tactics, and officer survival. Classroom sessions include community policing, safety and liability, health & fitness, and bicycle maintenance. The Conference also features the nation's largest bicycle patrol-related product exhibition.

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Bike Officers Catch Thief

Scotland Yard Sees Growing Success of Bicycles on Patrol

Submitted by Anthony Moore
New Scotland Yard, Victoria, London

On the 28th of October 2003, a 14 year-old male was robbed of his mountain bike and beaten up by six youths. A description of the stolen bike was given out on a briefing at DP where my officers were working. On the 30th October PC's Natasha Walker, Dave Phin and Urijah Phillips saw a bike fitting the description of said bike. The bike was being ridden by Rochester, who made off on seeing police. My 'extremely fit' officers caught and arrested Rochester, who was later charged with robbery.

There is no doubt that if these officers had not been on bikes themselves, Rochester would have escaped. He is a PYO with lots of previous for violent robberies and there are also numerous entries on the crimint system regarding him. This also demonstrates the effectiveness of intelligence lead policing.

There is another arrest just brought to my attention of an arrest on CD a couple of months ago. This was again a robbery where the victim (or possibly a witness) was chasing the offender down The Haymarket but was losing ground. PC 343AB Rob Belson reacted swiftly and caught the offender. This obviously shows how useful bikes are when offenders run off.

Another example of the bikes' usefulness was the arrest of someone breaking into a parking ticket machine in the Paddington area. Two of my cyclists approached the offender unheard and unseen. They stopped on either side of the offender, who took a few seconds to register that they were police officers. He still had wire in the machine and was arrested for attempted theft.

© 2003 IPMBA. This article first appeared in Fall 2003 issue of IPMBA News.