Yesterday on my way to the train, I saw two cops riding around Hollywood on these three-wheeled Urban Assault Segways:
How long before we get this… ?
On a more serious note, I think these are a great idea. Car patrols are bad for neighborhoods and bad for police relations. Rather than the beat cop who walks the streets, who you might say hi to, we have cops in cars. That means they can patrol a wider area, but they get walled off from the people they are there to serve, making them inextricably ‘other’ and making them a reactive rather than preventative measure (or Matt Ygelsias can explain it all better here).
These jobbers seem to be the best of both worlds, allowing for some speed and mobility, but also with some community interaction. In fact, as you can (sort of) see from the photo above, the cops were smiling and talking to the gawkers in the street. A healthy mix of cop cars and these friendlier Segway thingies might be a real boon, especially in a city with as poor a history of police-citizen relations as Los Angeles.
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