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MAUREEN BYRNE AHERNAn officer who pedals his beat stops for a chat and ends up solving 16 crimes. That's community policing.
SEMINOLE - Think cops who ride bicycles around neighborhoods don't accomplish much except maybe burn some calories? Think again.
A recent bike patrol in a Seminole neighborhood led a community policing officer to two juveniles, who are suspects in a rash of car and home burglaries. One brother has been arrested and charged with burglary and grand theft. The other is still at large.
And the crime spree?
"It stopped," said Deputy Adam Sarlo, Seminole's community policing officer.
Sarlo credits his bicycle, which he says was a huge help in solving 16 crimes and confiscating more than $3,000 in stolen property. While riding his bike this month, he chatted with some residents in the Blossom Lake neighborhood. That casual conversation gave him the lead he needed.
"Had I been in the cruiser, maybe they would have waved to me, but I probably wouldn't have had the opportunity to stop and talk to them," he said.
Wanda Koske is one of the neighbors who was burglarized.
"I think it's a wonderful tool," she said of the bicycle Sarlo rides. "People are more apt to talk about what's going on."
Late in July, Sarlo received a "burglary pattern alert" for the Blossom Lake neighborhood, which is east of Seminole Boulevard and north of 54th Avenue. Someone was breaking into cars and stealing items from carports and porches. The burglaries were happening overnight.
Sarlo had a hunch and pursued it. He ended up at the home of the two juveniles, who live in the quiet, middle-class neighborhood. Their grandmother allowed Sarlo to search her property, where he found an air compressor, a drill, a camera and a cooler.
But none of those items had been reported stolen. So Sarlo continued his police work. Only on this day he was on his bicycle.
As he approached a man and woman getting into a car, Sarlo mentioned their broken mailbox, warning them about mail theft. They said that no one had stolen any mail, but a friend of theirs who recently visited had had an air compressor swiped from his truck.
Bingo.
Sarlo returned to the juveniles' home and confiscated the air compressor. But he found more - fishing poles, tackle boxes, checkbooks and credit cards. "Their house was loaded with all of these stolen items," he said.
The owner of the air compressor never reported it stolen, Sarlo said. Mrs. Koske didn't file a report either when some fishing equipment was stolen from a golf cart parked in her yard.
"We just figured it was our fault since we left it out there," she said.
Community policing has been around since the 1980s. The concept of combining the efforts and resources of the police, local government and community members came about after a series of studies on how to reduce fear of crime and how to increase trust of law enforcement.
Remember when police officers walked a beat? They knew the ins and outs of the community they patrolled. Now officers are using bikes, scooters and even inline skates to "walk" a beat.
"It's about being a neighbor," said William Matthews, director of the Washington, D.C.-based Community Policing Consortium, a partnership of five of the leading police organizations in the United States. "Anything that gets the officer outside of the car is a good thing. It allows them to be up close and personal."
Sarlo agrees. "I would definitely say that it's a tool that I use, just like the helicopter has been used to catch bank robbers," he said. "Is it effective all of the time? No. It's another tool at my disposal to help make Seminole a safer place."
Sarlo has some advice: Lock doors. Most of the cars that were burglarized were unlocked. And victims of a crime should always report it to the police, he said.