Two-man patrols maneuver through urban kaleidoscope
by Jack Cox, Denver Post
It is 10 o’clock on a warm Saturday night, and police officers John Medford and Darren Ulrich are checking out the action at the Denver Skatepark.
Suddenly the sounds of sliding and scraping are interrupted by the loud boom-bash of a traffic collision. Just yards away, at the top of the 20th Street exit off northbound Interstate 25, a pickup has broadsided a sport-utility vehicle, and the truck now appears to be fleeing the scene.
“Six twenty-nine,” Medford barks into the microphone clipped to his collar, identifying his unit. “Got a hit-and-run, eastbound on 20th from I-25.”
Abruptly, the pickup turns off, its right front tire squealing piteously under the grip of a crumpled fender. “Now heading south on Little Raven,” the officer says. “We’ll pursue.”
Ulrich, already on his bike, leads the way. They pedal hard past Commons Park, click-shifting quickly into their highest gears. But the chase is over almost before they can work up a sweat. An undercover officer cruising nearby pulls over the errant vehicle just south of 15th Street, near the entrance to Six Flags Elitch Gardens, and the two-wheelers brake to a stop beside it seconds later.
The truck’s windshield is decorated by a starburst crack the size of a corn tortilla, denoting the spot where the driver’s head hit the glass. Coolant dribbles from the damaged radiator like lime syrup leaking from a Sno-Kone.
The man behind the wheel, a 20-year-old Mexican national, is “drunk on his ass,” Medford reports. Not only that, but he has no driver’s license. Worse, the white powder they find on his nose is not residue from an airbag deployment, but cocaine.
The person who may be most inconvenienced, though, is the guy’s older brother, who owns the truck. As one of the officers explains, the vehicle may well be seized as evidence in the drug case.
It’s another adventurous night out for Medford and Ulrich, members of a small cadre of Denver cops who regularly trade their squad cars for mountain bikes - and in the process get up-close and personal with urban life in all its guises, from homeless junkies to out-of-state tourists.
The specially trained patrolmen, who ride high-performance Schwinns that weigh less than the gear they carry as part of their uniform, look at first glance like ordinary cyclists, clad in bike helmets, black cargo shorts and polo shirts. But with the word “POLICE” imprinted in 3-inch-high white letters on the back of their shirts, and a silver shield embossed on the front - plus radio, pistol, flashlight, handcuffs, Mace and other implements on their belts - they are as identifiably a part of Denver’s finest as officers in sedans.
“They’re good for public contact. People feel we’re more approachable on bicycles,” says District 6 Cmdr. Mike Battista, who supervises an area from Capitol Hill to Five Points to Auraria, and includes three two-man bike details among the 160 officers under his command.
“It’s a voluntary assignment,” Battista says of the bike patrols. “You’ve got to want to do it, because it’s more work. But the guys who do it have a passion for it.”
Says Medford, who’s been patrolling by bike for two years, “I have a blast - I absolutely love it. It’s different every day, and it’s a wide range of experiences. It’s quite literally a ticket to the greatest show on Earth.”
Bikes are not only more pedestrian-friendly, but more maneuverable than cars or motorcycles, Medford says. They can be ridden up curbs, down stairways, over barriers, across lawns, through lobbies and even into elevators.
“We can get anywhere in the district in under 10 minutes, most times faster than in a car, especially when there are events going on downtown,” he adds. “And because we’re outside, not listening to a motor, we can hear things.”
Like suspicious commotions, cries for help - or gunshots. Indeed, on two weekends in a row recently, it was bike cops, not their colleagues in cruisers, who first called in the adrenaline-pumping announcement “Shots fired!”
Because bikes are less obtrusive than squad cars, pedaling cops also tend to catch criminals in the act. Medford and Ulrich say they once surprised a heroin addict with a needle in his arm, just as he was about to inject himself.
Sometimes, on routine patrol through the seedier parts of downtown, the two have sent junkies scrambling for cover “like the Marines in ‘The Sands of Iwo Jima,”’ chuckles Ulrich, an ex-Marine himself.
On this shift, which runs from 6 p.m. to 4 a.m. (the bike cops work four 10-hour shifts a week), Medford and Ulrich make no drug arrests. But on a mid-evening visit to the new Millennium Bridge, they record a near-miss at a “shooting gallery” where they have nabbed two female addicts just the night before, and where two other bike cops will apprehend a third junkie a few hours later.
“Any dank little cubbyhole, they’ll be there,” Ulrich comments, as he and his partner kick gingerly at the accoutrements of addiction they find at the base of the structure. Scattered in the dirt are lids of soda-pop cans, used for heating up heroin; empty bottles of bleach, for sterilizing needles; large plastic packing pads, for sleeping off the buzz once the narcotics have taken hold. And, incongruously, a nice box of Prismacolor pencils, apparently abandoned by an addict with an artistic bent.
(The arrested junkies, incidentally, prove quite helpful to the police department. In exchange for what they hope will be more lenient treatment at the hands of prosecutors, they agree to serve as case studies in what’s called DRE School - a course in “drug recognition and evaluation,” in which cops from places like Grand Junction and Buena Vista come to the big city to learn to identify the tell-tale signs of various kinds of drug use.)
Medford - athletic, crew-cut and 28 years old - looks like a mountain biker who wears a police uniform, while Ulrich - taller, more sardonic, and turning bald at 38 - looks more like a cop who rides a mountain bike. Both grew up in Denver, and both have been on the force since 1997.
As a teenager, Medford was a promising ski racer. He ranked eighth in the nation in slalom as a 16-year-old, but blew out a knee before he could compete in the junior nationals at 17, and never went back. Now, when his schedule permits, he races mountain bikes as well as road bikes, and works days off at the Collins Bike Shop on East Colfax Avenue, where two of three current employees are police officers.
Medford comes from a military family, but says he realized after graduating from Machebeuf High School that “if I joined the military, I’d have to leave Colorado.” To improve his chances of staying, he signed on as a Denver police cadet in 1993 and worked 25 hours a week for four years while earning a bachelor’s degree in industrial technology from Metropolitan State College.
Ulrich, also a Metro State grad, grew up in Englewood and held several different jobs before he “fell into” police work after brushing shoulders with law enforcement as an administrator in a hospital emergency room. He joined the police reserve in 1991 and earned his cycling certification in 1994, after taking a week-long course in which he learned “how to fall, how to maneuver through a crowd, how to contact people on a bike - stuff the everyday rider would never think of.”
Some 280 of Denver’s 1,600 police officers are now bike-certified, but only a handful ride regularly. Two are assigned to a daytime detail along the East Colfax corridor, and four patrol the central business district at night, with one pair riding Wednesday through Saturday nights and the other Saturday through Tuesday. They typically ride from April until November, but good weather last year allowed them to continue well into December.
Medford and Ulrich, who cover an average of 15 to 20 miles per night, begin their shift by pulling their bikes out of a metal shed behind the district substation at 1566 Washington St., where about 25 such bikes are kept locked up and ready for duty.
Their mounts are equipped with 27-speed drive trains, shock absorbers, disc brakes, aerodynamic wheels and battery-powered lights. Rear racks are installed on the seat posts to hold carry-all bags that contain a lock, repair tools, binoculars and other gear.
“The only thing you need that’s different from a regular bike is a better wheel set, because of the extreme weight on the back,” says Medford. “I went through three sets of wheels last year.”
Several of the bikes have been furnished by the Downtown Denver Partnership and Capitol Hill United Neighborhoods, which both benefit from the kind of policing at which bike patrols excel. The partnership also supplies the Kawasakis used by motorized patrols on the 16th Street Mall.
Once they have donned their belts, Medford and Ulrich head west down 16th Avenue to Broadway, where they are promptly flagged down by a woman in white shorts and a chartreuse shirt. It is the first of numerous encounters that will test the officers’ people skills far more than their bike-handling abilities.
She is concerned about the welfare of a small child who’s been left in a car across the street. The officers chat with the father, who’s sitting in the driver’s seat by now, and find out the kid is 8 years old and has been alone for only a few minutes while the dad was visiting the mother at a street vendor’s booth nearby. Their verdict: “No neglect.”
A few blocks farther down the mall, the cops are hailed by a woman who has witnessed a fight in Five Points and wants to make sure she’s not being followed home on light-rail by one of the combatants. “We can watch her through that,” Medford observes, as the woman boards a car and goes safely on her way.
Next comes a man who wants to know the way to Walgreens. Politely, they point to the store a block away. Another seeks directions to the Wazee Supper Club, still another to the ESPN Zone.
“You’re always doing community policing, always out talking to the public, because they see you,” Medford comments. “You do foot patrols, and people still won’t approach you. On a bike, they do.”
Sometimes the greetings aren’t entirely friendly. The cops must brush off snide remarks about “Teflon vests” and tipsy requests to “Please, Ossifer, arrest this person.” And frequently, they must ignore people who are obviously smoking marijuana to pursue more urgent business elsewhere.
“It’s gonna be a bad night,” Ulrich mutters. “Too many people with a low IQ and a high alcohol level.”
A call comes in from a low-rent apartment building near the Greyhound bus station. A tenant is complaining that a neighbor is threatening to kill him. The cops ride straight into the lobby and park their bikes in front of the elevator, joining two other officers who have arrived in a squad car.
“So, what do you want to do about this?” says Ulrich, addressing the man, who is unshaven and wearing a baseball cap backward. “You want to go to court and testify against this guy?”
“Yes,” the tenant insists, “I want him arrested.”
But after conferring with the building manager and visiting the neighbor, the cops conclude that the complainant is the one who’s causing the trouble. He has been getting drunk and tossing cigarette butts and other trash onto the deck of the neighbor, who lives just below him.
“Every once in a while, somebody’ll tell us the truth,” Ulrich says, after they get the parties calmed down. “Not often, but it does happen.”
Back on the mall, their taillights flashing red and blue, the partners lock up their bikes outside a Noodles & Co. outlet and go inside for $5 bowls of pasta and red sauce. Often, they say, they get supper so late their choices are limited to the few places that continue to serve after midnight, such as Chili’s, Illegal Pete’s, Duffy’s and the Rock Bottom Brewery.
Sometimes, they are so pressed for time they make do with sandwiches from a 7-Eleven - or, at worst, packs of energy gel and cans of Red Bull or Amp or Go Fast.
After investigating the accident near the skate park, the partners head up the Cherry Creek bike path to file an arrest report at police headquarters. A rat skitters across the concrete in front of Ulrich, and he stops abruptly to check out the hole where it disappears, holding his arms out like a fisherman to show his partner it was “this big.”
Moments later, they pedal up the ramp to Market Street to check out several young people who appear from the smell of things to be smoking pot. Ulrich sifts through a planter, looking in vain for evidence of harder drugs, while Medford informs the four men and one woman in the group that the bike path has an 11 p.m. curfew. Plainly feeling uncomfortable, the loiterers get the message and move on.
It takes the officers nearly two hours to complete the paperwork related to the hit-and-run. Afterward, they head for LoDo to monitor the “out crowd” spilling into the streets as the bars prepare to close at 2 a.m.
“You’ve got 10,000 people looking to either urinate or get in a fight,” Ulrich says, as they join two fellow bike cops and four other uniformed officers at 19th and Market streets, the ground zero of late-night explosiveness.
The sidewalks are thronged with 20-somethings, some howling like coyotes or shrieking like jungle creatures. Young men walk by in packs of two or three, heads down. Two young women approach the phalanx of patrolmen. “Can we borrow your bikes?” one giggles. “We’re too drunk to drive.”
The traffic lanes are a colorful gridlock of limos, taxis, SUVs and cars with their windows down and their engines revved up. One of the cops yells at a driver to turn his radio down, saying it violates the noise ordinance if it can be heard on the other side of the street. Another offers a few words of caution - “Don’t get run over!” - to a pedestrian who nearly gets hit by a car while crossing against the light.
“If a fight starts here,” says Medford, “we go in en masse, because we’ve found if there are just three or four of us, the crowd can come in and things can get ugly.”
On this night, no rumbles erupt, and the crowd disperses peacefully. But the bike cops still have work to do. A block away on Larimer Street, they find the driver of a Dodge Durango parked and sitting behind the wheel with a beer in her hand and two empties in the gutter at her feet.
At one officer’s urging, the young woman - looking chilly in low-riders and a bandana top - gets out and deposits the litter in a trash can nearby. Meanwhile, another cop asks the three young men and two other women in the vehicle if anyone is sober enough to drive home, meaning he or she hasn’t had a drink all night.
When no one volunteers, the officer suggests that the passengers and driver get out and either walk to a restaurant or hail a taxi for a ride home. They choose the latter. “Well,” says Ulrich, “we just saved a DUI” - not to mention the roughly $10,000 an arrest would have cost the driver, including fines, court costs, lawyers’ fees, charges for anti-alcohol classes and sharply higher insurance premiums.
Near 18th Street, the cops find a young man passed out on the sidewalk and make a call to Denver Cares to come pick him up. Later, it turns out that he “isn’t even a bum,” as Ulrich puts it, but a University of Colorado student whose drinking apparently continued long after the football game ended earlier in the day.
The street is virtually empty when a small black coupe zips past and goes through a red light at the end of the block. The cops watch to see if the driver stops at the next light two blocks down. When he does, Medford hops on his bike and races off to write him a ticket.
But just as he enters the first intersection, a Yellow cab pulls out in front of him, the driver talking on his radio or cellphone. Medford swerves sharply and brakes hard, barely avoiding a collision. “It’s a red light!” he hollers at the cabbie. “Pull over!”
This isn’t the cabbie’s night. He was hoping to pick up a fare before another cab arrived. Instead, he is cited for careless driving, running a red light and having no proof of insurance.
“Hey, I thought I was dead, dude,” says Medford, as fellow bike cops Rob Shiller and Mike Timmerman stop to commiserate with him. “Thank god I have disc brakes.”
At 3 a.m. he and Ulrich take on their last chore of the night, checking out a faded blue Mustang that has been parked for several days at a one-hour meter on the north side of the bus terminal, its steering column trashed and its door unlocked.
“How long can it stay there before it gets towed away?” Medford is asked.
“Until now,” he says, getting off his bike and pulling out his citation book.
Down the street, an empty pizza box yawns fitfully in the predawn breeze.