The Department of Public Safety is planning to re-activate its bike patrol units in Garapan to save the government fuel expenses.<\/p>\n
Nine police officers and four Commonwealth Ports Authority police officers have been undergoing bike patrol training since Monday. The training is expected to be completed today, Friday.<\/p>\n
Police Officers Jason Tarkong and JJ Cabrera are training the officers with different bike obstacle courses at the parking lot of Duty Free Shoppers in Garapan.<\/p>\n
In an interview with Saipan Tribune Wednesday, Cabrera said that bike patrols do not consume fuel so the program will save government money.<\/p>\n
Police Officer 3 Frank Pangelinan underscored the need for police officers to undergo bike patrol certification because DPS is trying to re-implement the bike patrol units in Garapan.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese bikes can be utilized for crowd control in certain events\u2014concerts, fiestas whatever the case may be where police vehicles are not appropriate,\u201d said Pangelinan, who is a shift supervisor with the Patrol Section.<\/p>\n
Pangelinan said the bike patrol was not dissolved, but because some police officers resigned, DPS now has very few certified bike patrol officers.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo when there is a reshuffle, we have the needed officers who are certified to be transferred there,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Cabrera said they are using mountain bikes and the courses they are teaching are different.<\/p>\n
\u201cSafety is always a primary as police officers. We have a lot of tactical maneuvers. We have a lot of small moving maneuvers that we need to do, which is harder. We have obstacles\u2014climbing and descending stairs,\u201d Cabrera said.<\/p>\n
Pangelinan, who was one of the 13 trainees, said the program is not easy. <\/p>\n
\u201cYou really have to get your physical well-being way up to par. Because just like regular jogging and riding a bike, it\u2019s rigorous\u2026. especially when you have all these gears on and you are maneuvering obstacles, especially tight ones,\u201d Pangelinan said.<\/p>\n
Cabrera said they incorporate the rules of the road in the training. \u201cAs a police officer we have to follow the rules of the road,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Cabrera said it is easy for the officers to enforce traffic rules and regulations when it comes to vehicles. <\/p>\n
\u201cBut do we know how to enforce the rules with respect to bicyclists? That\u2019s one of the things that we\u2019re teaching the officers during this course,\u201d Cabrera added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Department of Public Safety is planning to re-activate its bike patrol units in Garapan to save the government fuel expenses.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-130785","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130785","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=130785"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130785\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=130785"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=130785"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=130785"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}