Bicycle Officers to Patrol Parks by Summer

Two Cleveland Heights police officers will get a new set of wheels by summer.

The department isn’t buying new cars — the officers will hop on bikes and ride around , and  parks to monitor the areas. 

“(Bicycle police have) better access to different areas you can’t get to with a car, and better interaction with people who are in the parks, including kids,” said Jeff Robertson, Cleveland Heights police chief.  “When folks are walking through the park and see a police officer on a bicycle, it’s easier for them to talk and to interact.

“We’ve always had a beat officer down in Cain Park, we’re just trying something different.”

Robertson said the department is interviewing officers who are interested, and the two selected will go to Delaware, OH, for training. In addition to surveying the parks, the officers will also help patrol street festivals and other events.

He said he hopes they are trained and the bikes are bought by summer, but did not have an estimate on how much the program would cost.

The department is also working on installing emergency call boxes, often found on college campuses, around the city.

Like the bicycle patrols, Robertson hopes to have at least one call box, which operate off radio frequencies, in each city park by summer.

“They became obsolete because of the new phone systems that were out there,” said Robertson, adding that the old boxes worked off phone lines. “They had been out there for years. They hadn’t worked for a little while and the decision was made to take them down.”

The first targeted area is the parks, he said, where people may not carry cell phones. The department is still meeting with companies to determine what type of call boxes to purchase.  

“Once those are in place, we’ll look into putting them into certain business areas as best we can,” he said.