Nobody Likes Weapons

As a fairly courteous, safe driver that loves BMW’s, I always use my turn signals.  I actually go out of my way to not drive like the entitled, stereotypical BMW driver.  As a cyclist who wants bicycles to become more popular and not hassle other road users, I go out of my way to ride in a manner to keep everyone as safe as possible.  When a clapped out 3-series cuts across three lanes without a turn signal, forcing me to slam on my brakes, a piece of me dies.  When someone on a bicycle is riding against traffic, on a sidewalk, or just in a manner that’s uncourteous or unsafe, I get more annoyed than others.  This is why we can’t have nice things.  This is why the general perception of BMW drivers and cyclists is approximately the same…entitled idiots out to endanger you and clog traffic.  It’s why I try to fight it every time I get the chance.

In the spring of 1994 my local police department wheeled their new Trek mountain bikes into my classroom to explain why officers would be out on bicycles in the summer months.  The officer that came in has long since retired and passed away, but he was a cycling enthusiast outside of work.  He explained how bicycles could zip around the denser, urban area of Main Street much quicker and easier than a squad car.  How an officer on a bicycle was likely to be seen as approachable and more friendly to the average person.  It made tons of sense then and still does now.  It even got dramatized in a terrible TV show, Pacific Blue.  (Think Baywatch on bicycles without the Hoff.)

But the world is a wild place these days.  It’s as polarized as it’s been in at least century and virtually everyone has a video camera in their pocket with a means to broadcast instantly.  All of the chaos we see these days is enough to make anyone with a heartbeat very uncomfortable.  Protests, counter protests, riots, and violence are captured and shared daily for people to absorb or scoff at based on the biases they hold.  In all of these snippets of "reality" the person holding the camera wants you to see, there’s something that makes me uncomfortable.  Police officers weaponizing bicycles.  If you have TV or the internet, you’ve seen it at least in passing.  And it reinforces your negative perception of cyclists.

A bicycle police officer is more likely to use a bicycle to control a crowd in conjunction with tear gas than to write a parking ticket.  There’s even a report out there calling bicycles a “critical resource” in police responses to civil unrest.  The city of Boston and neighboring cities share bike officers, having up to 100 available called the COBRA unit, for this very reason.  They partake in virtually anything where large crowds will gather, including the Boston Marathon.  This year they were a part of the controversial policing of spectators at Mile 21, and yes they barricaded spectators with their bicycles.  

Call me a hypersensitive, overly emotional millennial.  I don’t care.  I'm not pushing a political agenda here.  Law enforcement is critical!  But when someone is using a bicycle in a manner that can be perceived negatively, by anyone, it reflects upon everyone that rides a bicycle.  It's a Marketing 101 level concept.  I sure as hell do a lot of bicycle riding (I’ve logged a total of 46,270 miles over the course of 2,566 hours as of this writing.), but I can’t spread enough goodwill to offset footage on Good Morning America.  It’s good to know that I’m not alone.  Fuji and Trek have had it with police officers using their products in a manner counter to their image and stopped selling their bikes to police departments.  Clearly, this is a nationwide thing.

When a sub-group of a much larger group behaves badly, the larger group always gets the bad press.  Not just us BMW drivers and cyclists.  A few videos is all it took for Mustang drivers to be labeled as idiots chomping at the bit to do a burn out, lose control, and mow down a crowd.  Heck, there's an entire Wikipedia page dedicated to outlining common stereotypes of ethnic and social groups in the US alone.

If police officers on bikes are terrible people, all people on bikes are terrible people, right?  Every time a bike officer is captured on video weaponizing their bike, someone's perception of bicycles shifts.   The last thing cyclists need are police officers, providers of law and order, adding fuel to the fire they find themselves in.