Four day course for bicycle police wraps up in Columbia

Craig says bikes afford officers some advantages over patrol cars. "You can smell what’s going on, you can hear what’s going on and you’re more approachable," he says, "and you’re still more stealthy, too."

For example, he says, an officer on a bike can hear a disturbance and smell marijuana. And some people are more apt to trust an officer on a bicycle. "In a patrol car, you’ve got the windows up, and with a bike, I can stop at anywhere, at anyplace or any time," Craig says. "We get a lot of good comments from the people in the subdivisions because we’re so visual."

During last week’s certification class at the Hearnes Center, officers practiced traversing an obstacle course of orange cones and working on skills such as dismounting in a hurry while chasing a suspect and using the bicycle as a shield.