Did you like it?

I met an officer in Balto a while ago and asked him if he liked it and he said he loved it.

Comments?

I did, with Cuban Pete.

I've done it... And I'm just getting to my over the hill mark in my police career. At my agency it was still a privilege to get a car when I started.... A privilege that was easy to loose. Late to squad brief... Foot beat in the hood

Ouch.

Yep foot patrol in public housing. Lots of miles on the boot and lots of practice ducking rocks and bottles lmao. We also had foot patrol down town and a couple other places and if you took it seriously you could actually get some quality arrests.

J-

They still do it in Austin. The entire downtown bar district is a walking beat. The officers walk right out of the police station to start the shift. .

We do a lot of foot patrol in downtown during the summer or early fall. Bring in off duty officers to do the foot stuff to work clubs and bars. Easy money. Mountain bikes are a great tool or substitute for foot patrol. Better visibility, can respond further and faster and allow for the same interaction with the public as being on foot. Also you are wearing a bike helmet which is nice when the post bar closing fights go down....

You guys probably know I'm an old man and when I think of a cop walking a beat I picture a guy with his left hand in his pocket and his right hand twirling a nightstick. Thank the Late Show for that one.

OTOH I think about you guys once in a while for a number of reasons, some actually good, believe it or not.

I think that sometimes going back to Old School tactics from time to time is a pretty good deal for both parties.

It makes the police visible and allows interaction that would not occur in a patrol car.

I think if I were a cop I would like a beat in a downtown area where I could interact with the public . OTOH you couldn't get me walking a beat in a public housing area to save my ass.

Whatever, just a few thoughts.

The first agency I worked for back in the late 70's, was a very small municipal PD. It had a "Cover shift" that started at 8:00pm and went to 4:00am. For the first four hours of the shift, you walked the downtown business district and checked doors and windows of all the stores. You also checked on any business that was open at the time.

For the last four hours, you were in a patrol car and your primary beat was the downtown business district. You were also used as the main backup unit for the other two beat cars we had.

During the summer months, part of our day shift duties, was to walk the the main downtown area. That was pretty fun to do, as you were able to really get to know the stores and their owners and employees. There was also a small city park that was in this area and that was a great place to hang out with the locals. As I was born and raised in this town, I know a lot of the residents and the was both good and bad at times....  

The second agency I worked for was a County Sheriff's Office. Our jurisdiction was spread out in pockets of unincorporated areas throughout the county. We didn't have many towns in our jurisdiction that had business districts, but in the ones that we did have, we were encouraged to get out and walk the main business streets during our shifts. In the other areas, we did have some mini marts and bars that we did "Business checks" on.  

In our Southern district, we had an area of low income section 8 housing. This area was converted Naval housing for WW-II that they turned into projects. We didn't do much walking the beat in this area and any call was responded to by at least two units. When you did leave your patrol car, you always left a Deputy to watch over the cars or when you returned, all of the tires were flat and all of the windows were broken out....

And, of course, every Bernie voter is going to want you to walk a one man foot beat there and establish a groovy RELATIONSHIP with these people and show them yada yada yada. Knowing I would have to deal with people like this is one of the very reasons I NEVER considered a career as a cop.

Yeah, like I said, not a lot of walking around done on that beat. It was the only patrol sector that we ran two man cars in. One of the favorite pastimes of the local hoodlums was to call in a false 911 report of some sort of an emergency. When we arrived on scene, we were met with a barrage of rocks, bricks or whatever was handy to throw at us from the upper levels of the high rises. It was actually in the regs for that sector for us to wear our helmets any time we got out of the car.

We affectionately called our southern station "Fort Apache"…… it was a single story bunker like set up that was attached to the fire station. It had 1/2" steel plate in the walls and small bullet proof windows that only opened about an inch for ventilation. New Years Eve was always a fun time. The locals would start shooting around 11:00pm and finish around 1:00am or whenever the ammo ran out. After the shooting stopped we would go out to escort the ambulances and pick up whoever had been hit by stray gunfire……Never a dull moment in Sector 1………

I walked a beat for a year back around '95. Mostly projects.

You poor bastard!


Betcha it was the longest year of your career.

Not really, spent most of it hanging out in the FDNY firehouse in the area.

MY first department I ever worked for was a small town of about 1,300 people.  We had one cruiser.  Shifts overlapped a little bit.  I would go in at 6pm and the first 4 hours of shift were on foot checking the businesses while they closed up and making sure they were all locked up.  Police station was on the town square.  Last 4 were in a cruiser.

Large metropolitan department. Yes and I hated every minute of it.

Yea, I imagine in a small Mayberry town it may actually be enjoyable... In my case it was a busy urban area with more than enough violent crime to keep you busy

It was for the first agency I worked for. We only had 18 sworn officers and that included the Chief....

The Sheriff's office I went to work for after that was around 225-250 sworn officers, but that include the Custody division and the Court floor (Bailiff's) division. Probably a third of that was patrol and investigations. We were definitely more active than my first department......

Got out of the academy in 98 and next day was on a foot post in the South Bronx housing projects, working 6p-2:35a... Did I mention it was December... One man foot post... Was delightful being one with nature!

If you were lucky the 4-12 guys in the house on meal would give you a ride to your post, otherwise you jumped on the bus...

We stood roll call with the day tour sectors and still had to take the bus.

It was actually the only period in my life I ever rode a NYC bus... And I am thankful for that... Everyday...

One of our local mid sized departments make all the rookies walk the downtown till they find Micky.  Mickey is a a painting on the side of an old building that someone had put up 20 yrs ago on the 6th floor of a building. It's literally a painting of Mickey Mouse. I have heard of guys walking the beat for 4 months some just a few days, its a right of passage and a lesson on being observant.

The foot beat was the best job going back in the day. I enjoyed it immensely. Im still close with a business owner I used to watch out for 28 years ago.

When I started (1984) everyone had to walk a beat for about 5 years. You got no specialist training before that. It's where you learn your basic policing skills, and whether it is really for you. Now they get it far easier (swings lamp and brushes salt from shoulder)...

yup,  foot patrol was the only way to get somewhere on the strip during spring break. The "scenery"  made time fly by.   I loved it.   (Panama City Beach)

Same here. Section 8 housing complex. 18 buildings on 18 acres. We had 1165 incident reports in 1 year.

Dave N

I've noticed that foot patrol in general is a dying art in my generation and younger. Some of the new guys ask me fairly regularly how I drum up so many foot chases. I tell them you have to get out of your car. The interdiction style of policing has caught on like wildfire and everyone only wants to do traffic stops... Only problem is a lot of these guys have no idea how to actually properly execute the style of policing they are trying to perform and it ends up in stop and search everything that moves... Then they show up on a dash cam video in GD

I walked a beat several times when I worked for a PD of a college campus on Nightshift.  It was alright on dayshift because there were people out. But on nightshift it was a ghost town. And even if there were calls someone with a car was dispatched. It was really a job for someone who wanted to get paid to do absolutely nothing.

After hour 6 of 12 I found myself wondering around campus bored out of my mind and my feet numb. I eventually found a bench to chill on for the next 7 hours.


But after the agency got police bicycles  and foot patrol became bicycle patrol it was a sweet gig. I actually caught people breaking into cars in the parking garages on several occasions. And rolled up on all kinds of stuff that I have never found in a car.

" You guys probably know I'm an old man and when I think of a cop walking a beat I picture a guy with his left hand in his pocket and his right hand twirling a nightstick. Thank the Late Show for that one.

OTOH I think about you guys once in a while for a number of reasons, some actually good, believe it or not.

I think that sometimes going back to Old School tactics from time to time is a pretty good deal for both parties.

It makes the police visible and allows interaction that would not occur in a patrol car.

I think if I were a cop I would like a beat in a downtown area where I could interact with the public . OTOH you couldn't get me walking a beat in a public housing area to save my ass."

I've thought about carrying me old straight baton.  

I moved from days to night shift SGT.  We've had a several burglaries down town and in our highway business district.  Since taking over the shift I've got my officers walking down town and the business district. I'm walking it too.  I started walking it in the dead of winter before I told my officers.  Not only do we walk businesses but the schools and Junior College

 


From what I've been told, that's not too far off.  'Back in the day', guys in my department would walk the beat - always carrying their 'stick'.  This was before there were a lot of patrol cars or portable radios.  They had police call boxes on telephone poles all over the city.  When they got to a box they would open it with their key and insert the key into the box and turn it.  This would send a momentary current into the system that would show in dispatch.  This was known an 'spiking the box'.  It was a way of checking in with dispatch to let them know you were okay and where you were.  If you didn't spike a box every half hour or so they would get concerned and send the supervisor, who had the only patrol car, to check on you.  There was also a phone that would ring into dispatch so you could request assistance or report an incident.  If they had a call, dispatch could ring the phones and wait for you to answer so you could be dispatched.  Each box (and it's location) had a corresponding number assigned to it.  The numbers live on as we conduct area checks at night as the areas are still known to us by their former call box numbers.  The City Pier is '21', the power plant is '621', one of the Parks is '26', etc.  So if I call out '21 is secured', dispatch knows the City Pier area facilities have been locked up.  


I walked a beat on my first job in a small village on the weekend shifts.  I rather enjoyed it and the interaction with all the people - especially the kids who frequented the village center area.  Getting to know them helped me out a lot in them cooperating with me on other issues (fights, incidents they had witnessed, problems they were having at home with their parents, etc).  I would say the same with my time as School Resource Officer - building a rapport with those kids back then still helps me out years later as they have become adults.  Being a bit South of Buffalo, there were a lot of bitter cold nights out walking.




-K

Closest I got to that is MLK day in the hood. There is a parade and festivities near a community center. Roads are shut down. Probably got anywhere from 15-25k people walking around all day long in the streets.  Roads are pretty much shut down because of people in the streets everywhere.  Pretty much spend anywhere from 6-8 hours walking the area.  Its consistently going to have a few large brawls, stabbings and a shooting every year.