GREEN BAY, WI (WTAQ-WLUK) – The Green Bay Police Department is looking to become more mobile in crowded spaces.
Even before last month’s announcement of Green Bay hosting the 2025 NFL Draft, the city’s police department was already looking to buy bikes.
“We see this as some capability that we need to develop fairly deliberately,” said GBPD Chief Chris Davis. “And the Draft will be here in less than two years, so we want to be prepared for that.”
Davis says adding 27 bikes, for what will be called a Mobile Response Team, will give the department public order policing capability. It’s something he says the department currently doesn’t have.
“You can’t drive a motor vehicle usually through a crowd with any kind of speed at all, and if you’re on foot, you’re limited by how fast you can walk or run.”
Davis says bikes also create quick barricades, which comes in handy for parades and marches.
The proposal is to use state grant money to buy the 27 bikes from Broken Spoke Bike Studio for $33,480.
The city’s finance committee signed off on the spending plan Tuesday evening, and the city council is expected to do the same at its June 27 meeting.
“I think Chief Davis, with his experience where he came from in Portland, they used the bikes quite a bit,” said Alderperson Bill Galvin, a retired police officer. “I think he just came in and saw a need, and he found a funding source. So, he’s getting a program started, which I think is going to become very useful.”
These bikes will be used beyond just those events with large crowds, especially because there is a perception that police officers are more approachable while they’re riding a bike.
“Stopping to talk to children, interacting with neighbors,” said Galvin. “You can see things and hear things that you don’t see or hear when you’re in your squad car.”
Davis says he hopes to borrow a trainer from the Milwaukee Police Department for two to four days to get the Mobile Response Team ready to go later this year.
“There is a specific police mountain bike course that we will want to put everyone through,” said Davis. “I’ve actually been through it myself. It’s a lot of just riding a mountain bike in an urban environment, a lot of really slow speed kind of things because for a lot of these events you’re moving really slowly, and, sometimes, it’s actually harder to ride slow than it is to go fast.”
Davis says the bikes could also get some use in helping police in Milwaukee next summer when the city hosts the Republican National Convention.
He says they’ll also likely be used here during presidential campaign events next year.
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