Police: Patrol on Bikes

COLUMBIA, S.C. (WOLO) — “We couldn’t have asked for a better day,” says Deputy Chief Ruben Santiago of the Columbia Police Department. That’s how Deputy Chief Santiago describes the Columbia Police Department’s bike patrol’s first day on the job. “We had 2 teams which are 2 officers per team, so 4 bikes in the whole thing. They were able to get in and out of the crowds, help other officers that were asking for assistance,” says Santiago. The group was give quite a task after about forty hours of training. “It’s kind of throwing them straight into like, a full fledged anything can happen operation,” says Santiago. This year’s St. Patrick’s Day Festival brought out the biggest crowd on record. With more than 38,000 tickets sold, and more than 2,000 runners in the St. Patrick’s Day Five Points 5K, whom received a ticket into the festival with their registration, more than 40,000 people attended. That doesn’t include the more than 7,000 tickets given to a host of others such as sponsors, media, VIP’s, volunteers and festival employees. But among that crowd were 101 Columbia police officers. “We had a command post, we had constables,” says Santiago. Helping keep crime down. “During the festival it was very, very mellow,” says Santiago. Crandall Sims reporting, “Columbia Police say the biggest problem this weekend was drunk and disorderly conduct.” Police say in all, 36 arrests were made, ten of those were made by the bike patrol. Most of the three dozen arrests came from drunk and disorderly coinduct along with those who interfered with officers while trying to do their jobs. Other reason for the arrests include, possession of marijuana, possessoin of alcohol by persons under 21, possession of altered ID, unlawful urination and resisting arrest. SLED was also on hand Saturday, they caught eight violations of underage drinking. Nine other arrests were made outside of the festival for things such as drugs and drinking alcohol where it was not permitted. While the St. Patrick’s Day Festival may be over, that doesn’t mean you have to wait until next year to see the bike patrol unit in force. “No not all, they’re going to constantly see them in the Main St. corridor, Five Points, the Shandon area,” says Santiago. With more training classes on the way, police say there will soon be sixteen officers with bike patrols throughout Columbia. “Anywhere you can get a bike patrol,” says Santiago.