Earlier this 12 months, Jeff Scanlan — proprietor on Pedego Electric Bikes in downtown Menlo Park — reached out to Chief of Police David Norris to seek out out if the Department had any curiosity in incorporating electric bikes into their present fleet of normal patrol bikes. The reply was sure — they’d been wanting into that risk.
“I arranged for the Department to take one of my bikes outfitted with the necessary flashing pursuit lights for a period of time as a demonstration bike to evaluate it,” stated Jeff. “The original demonstration period was set for two months. Within a week, I was contacted by the Department with a request to purchase two bikes as soon as possible.”
Today Jeff (pictured middle in picture) delivered the two electric bikes to the Police Department joined by Menlo Park Mayor Betsy Nash (left) and Chamber of Commerce Board member Clem Molony (proper).
Among the benefits of incorporating electric bikes:
-Bike patrol officers can cowl extra floor extra rapidly on the e-bikes than on their conventional bikes, permitting them to pursue suspects they may in any other case not have the ability to pursue.
-Given they will cowl extra floor, they are often extra seen locally on the e-bikes than they’re on their conventional bikes.
-Officers are additionally much less winded when participating suspects from their patrol bikes as a result of they don’t should work as laborious pedaling electric bikes.
“Just last week, one of the patrol officers using our e-bike came into the store and shared a story of him catching a bike thief who had just stolen a bike from in front of the Walgreens on Santa Cruz,” stated Jeff. “He said he would never have been able to catch him on a regular bike, and by the time the dispatch could have directed a patrol car to pursue the suspect, the suspect would have escaped.”
The Menlo Park PD Bike Team is lively frequently with optimistic suggestions from each the officers and group members.
“This is an excellent example of a police department being reflective of our community in a creative way,” stated Chief Norris (pictured left in above picture). “Menlo Park is such a bike-friendly metropolis, and our bicycle-passion tradition throughout the police division has grown in a really natural method from inside.
“We are also tremendously thankful for our strategic partners here in town at Pedego, who made it tremendously easy for us to try, and then acquire electric power-assisted E-Bikes for patrol. These bikes are a hit with our officers and have already been an asset in fighting crime in addition to their effectiveness as a community engagement tool!”
Photos by Robb Most (c) 2022