U.S. Police Show How To Use A Bicycle As An Offensive Weapon

One week after George Floyd’s death at the hands—or, more accurately, the knee of a U.S. police officer in Minneapolis—American cities witnessed a further night of protests. Despite widespread curfews people are still spilling on to the streets. Many of these protests against police brutality are being met with police brutality. Videos of unprovoked attacks on peaceful protesters and members of the media by police are going viral on social media.

Shockingly, police motor vehicles are being used as weapons, but then so are bicycles.

The supposedly “humble” bicycle—usually a symbol of non-motorized meekness—is being used by America’s over-militarized law enforcement as a mix between a riot shield and a baton.

Photographs of police officers wielding Trek-branded bicycles will not be the sort of images the family-owned firm would be hoping for on the eve of the United Nations’ World Bicycle Day, June 3.

Last week Trek Bicycle launched the #GoByBike campaign, said to be a “movement for the betterment of our planet.”

Some police officers clearly didn’t get the memo: it’s betterment, not batterment.

Trek—one of the leading suppliers of bikes to U.S. police forces—was started in 1975 from a red barn, a former carpet warehouse in Waterloo, Wisconsin. The firm is still owned by the Burke family—John Burke is the son of company founder Richard Burke.

On the company blog, John Burke wrote on June 2 that “the ramifications of the unspeakable tragedy of George Floyd’s murder should extend far and wide throughout our country.”

He also complained about “police brutality and racism.”

“My opinion,” wrote Burke, “is that George Floyd’s murder signifies more than the raw police brutality African Americans have experienced for generations. Floyd’s death, and the riots that have ensued, signify in a greater sense, the growing disparity between the realities experienced by black people and white people across the United States.”

Burke’s opposition to police brutality is clear so it must grate that Trek products are being used offensively.

“Our Police Edition patrol bike welcomes the rigors of all-day riding,” says a website promotion for the Trek police bikes. They are “ready to roll, with 29-inch wheels for go-anywhere agility and speed,” continues the promo.

“This bike performs the job admirably, thanks to tough construction, quality components, and patrol-ready features.”

Patrol-ready features? Such as picking one up and battering a protestor with it? This egregious use is not Trek’s fault, and I have reached out to see if the company might like to comment.

Protestors, too, use bicycles, linking them to form impromptu barricades. But protestors aren’t cocooned in riot gear or armed with Mace “self-defence” sprays, guns and batons.

Bad teeth no bar

Bicycles have a long history of being used as offensive weapons. The British Army had bicycling battalions in the First World War—the first British soldier to be killed in that conflict, on August 21 1914, was Private John Parr, a reconnaissance cyclist in the 4th battalion of the Middlesex regiment.

And prior to the war, cyclists were encouraged to join up for the army. One 1912 recruitment poster for the S. Midland Divisional Cyclist Company asked “Are YOU fond of cycling? If so, why not cycle for the King?”

Cycles would be provided, advised the poster, adding “bad teeth no bar.”

Bicycles were advertised as weapons by journalist Marcus Tindal in 1901.

He used bicycles as fighting props in an article for Pearson’s Magazine, a London periodical which also published a U.S. edition. According to Tindal, a bicycle could be used as shield/baton.

If it “came to a fight the cyclist has a weapon in his cycle with which he may baffle attack in more ways than are at first apparent.”

Tindal advised readers that “self-protection awheel is an art full of possibilities,” especially for those “who possesses pluck and dash.”

Bicycle accessories could be employed as offensive weapons, showed Tindal.

“Nearly every cyclist carries a weapon on his machine which, under many circumstances, he may use with great effect: a strong, long, heavy metal pump offers as convenient a weapon as one could desire. Let the rider who is threatened by a foot-pad flourish his pump in his assailant’s face, and he will be surprised how quickly and precipitously the assailant jumps back. A formidable blow could be delivered in a man’s face with a heavy pump, especially when riding at speed.”

According to Tindal, small boys were worthy of attack: “To deliver a blow whilst riding—say, at the head of an objectionable small boy who has been indulging in the dangerous practice of throwing a cap at your [bicycle], and stands in need of punishment—it is necessary to swerve suddenly as you come alongside, so that you throw the balance of your machine over towards your assailant! If the blow be timed well, the shock of the recoil will have no other effect than to throw your machine back into an upright position, and to cause you to regain your balance easily, when you may ride on in triumph.”

And, in advice that some U.S.—and Belgian—bicycling police officers would now recognize, the bicycle can be deployed as a battering ram: “The right method is sufficiently simple,” suggested Tindal, “though it requires not a little nerve.”

It consisted, he said, in using the “momentum of the bicycle in disabling an opponent.”

The bicyclist needed to ride full-pelt at the one to be taken down and “by swerving and so throwing the balance of the machine well to the side of the person to be demolished, the recoil from the shock might be made to run concurrently with the natural recovery from the inclined position in which the blow was delivered.”

Bicycle as peace symbol? Think again.