Secret weapon in handling RNC protesters: police bikes

CLEVELAND — During the uneasy run-up to the Republican National Convention, local police were forced to defend the purchases of millions of dollars in gear to prepare for an expected wave of demonstrations during the four-day political spectacle.

There was debate about the suitability of military-style personnel carriers, riot gear and other provocative equipment that raised concerns about law enforcement tactics during the unrest in Ferguson, Mo., in 2014, following the police shooting of a black teenager.

Yet during the first two days of largely peaceful demonstrations here, the centerpiece of the law enforcement management strategy has been the simple mountain bike.

Local police have assembled a team of 300 bicycle officers, divided across two shifts, to guide and manage marches that have weaved through the heart of downtown, so far without incident.

Supplemented with recruits drawn from more than a dozen agencies, including Fort Worth and nearby Akron, the units have put a decidedly softer face on a vast security apparatus in a largely barricaded city.

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“You can’t do what they’re doing on foot; you can’t do it in a patrol car,’’ Police Chief Calvin Williams said Tuesday.

During a series of rallies and marches, police have used the bikes as reliable transport and portable cordons.

As a few hundred anti-Trump demonstrators marched through downtown Monday afternoon, they were shepherded by dozens of bicycle-riding police officers. The cops, mainly from the Cleveland and Akron departments, wore helmet-mounted cameras and confined the march to a circular route by intermittently using their bikes and bodies to form barricades to prevent marchers from departing from the planned route.

At one of the public squares, when an aggressive group of Westboro Baptist Church demonstrators engaged in a shouting match with an anti-Trump crowd, the bike cops swiftly slipped between them to create a buffer.

In a coordinated move repeated several times throughout the day, police officers dismounted and stood shoulder-to-shoulder with their bikes in front of them. At one point, on the signal of a supervisor, they all lifted their bikes in unison and thrust them forward a few feet – effectively pushing the crowd back without making physical contact.

Within minutes, contentious protesters who had been nose-to-nose were separated by a line of police and a 15-foot buffer.

Early Tuesday morning, a long line of bike cops from various agencies could be seen riding in a loose line through Public Square, one of the central plazas in downtown Cleveland, where barricades leave little room for patrol cars.

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The tactics have been lifted directly from the playbook of the Law Enforcement Bicycle Association, which helped bring the Cleveland unit from a mere proposal slightly more than a year ago to an on-the-street reality in time for deployment during the convention.

"Under these tight conditions, it's so much easier to get around on a bike,'' said Ben Kaufman, president of the Clermont, Fla., based LEBA, a training group made up of retired and active-duty cops. "Police on bicycles present a less-aggressive stance. We can use them to build temporary fences, and it's easier to keep groups on prescribed routes without looking intimidating.''

Kaufman said training began in early 2015 with an initial one-week, 40-hour course and progressed six months later with six days of additional training. Cleveland police also sought the assistance of the Seattle Police Department, whose unit is recognized as one of the most advanced in the country.

"They all know how to ride bikes, but it becomes more difficult carrying the necessary gear and dealing crowds in close proximity,'' he said.

Kaufman said bike units have become increasingly popular in police departments, including in Charlotte, N.C., where authorities deployed them during the 2012 Democratic National Convention.

"We're training all over the country now,'' Kaufman said. "It really makes us so much more approachable."

Cleveland police spokeswoman Sgt. Jennifer Ciaccia on Tuesday credited the bike units with helping to defuse potential clashes near the city's Public Square by ringing protest groups in an attempt "avoid physical contact.''

"They are very well trained to move (crowds) so that no people are injured and no officers are injured,'' she said.