Bicycle Patrolman Loves His Job

When police chief Tracy Frazzano made an offhand suggestion to her code enforcement officers, little did she know the fire she was igniting in one of her newest officers.

“A few months ago, I was in the code room at the end of the shift,” said J.D. Shelton, “Me and another guy were about to head out. About that time, the chief walks in and stands behind me and says, ‘I’ve got an idea.” I'm tired of getting hit in the head, in the face by the vegetation hanging over the sidewalks. If I'm getting hit, everybody else is getting hit, too. Why don’t we get a bike and get the sidewalks cleaned that way by bike? That's the easiest way to see it.”

Shelton says the chief not only rides her bicycle on the island, she also runs and walks.

 “It sounded like a great idea to me,” Shelton said. "And she knows I ride all the time, about 250 miles a month on this island. So I already knew where the sidewalk encroachments were. When the chief came up with that idea, that was the home run. I said yes! So that’s what we've been doing.”

Keith Richter, supervisor of code enforcement, couldn’t be more proud of the job Shelton’s doing.

“The bike patrol program, that’s all J.D.,” Richter said. “He put the whole program together. He checked into the bike. He checked into where he wanted to go, what he wanted to focus on. He’s got a great attitude. He’s very personable, very knowledgeable.  He’s a great asset to code enforcement. He really is. He did research on the bicycle, he gave input on where we would cover. We figured we’d cover the shared-use paths, where the bikes are. He worked with the police department on the code. Did some safety research. He went to Island Bike Shop and picked it all out. We got it approved and J.D. started that month.”

Instead of waiting for complaints to come in, Shelton is out looking for things that need to be addressed on the island’s comprehensive network of bike paths.

"What's cool about it,” Shelton said, "is it's proactive. It's not reactive. That's the home run with it.”

Shelton spends one day a week on the island’s bike paths.

“He’ll focus on encroachments over the sidewalk,” Richter said, "the low-hanging branches over the sidewalk. And he's also monitors his speed on his watch and he's got a speedometer. The city put that e-bike ordinance in, so if he's out riding and he's doing 12 miles an hour, he can do a little education on that, too.”

Speeding e-bike riders have been a scourge to the island. And while Shelton has encountered his share of speeding e-bike riders, he said it’s the police officers who are really putting a dent in the e-bike speeding problem.

 “Occasionally I will see them speeding,” Shelton said, “but it's been cut down tremendously.”

“It's mainly the work of the police department on that,” Richter said.

"I hear the officers pulling them over all the time,” Shelton said. "I don't have a stat for this, but it seems like every third time they're pulling someone over, it's an e-bike. This happens a lot. It amazes me.” 

Shelton likes the 12 m.p.h. speed limit on the bike paths. City Council debated back and forth about whether the speed limit should be 10 m.p.h. or 15 m.p.h. They ended up compromising on 12 m.p.h.

"I mean, I ride and I know when I'm riding on the sidewalk,” Shelton said, "when I look at my miles per hour, I think 11, 10, nine is kind of where I hover."

“The police have been active with the e-bike ordinance,” Richter said. "We do more of the education. We can give tickets if it's a code ordinance violation."

Both Richter and Shelton said the bike patrol has been received warmly by the populace.

“We’ve got some good enforcement,” Richter said. "You've got notice of violations. You've got verbal warnings. It's positive. It's very positive."

"People are receptive,” Shelton agrees. “The idea with the bikes is just to get peaceful voluntary compliance. That's the way we put it. Our conversations are all friendly. It's not combative in the least. We’ve been having a lot of conversations with people. I've been meeting a lot of interesting people."

Shelton, who moved to Marco Island from the mountains of Tennessee, said that while Marco doesn’t have many hills, it has something that’s equivalent to a long climb.

"For some unknown reason,” Shelton said, “it always feels like on this island, the wind is at your face when you're on the bike.”

Shelton is impressed with the amount of bicycle traffic on Marco’s shared-use paths. He loves interacting with the island’s cyclists.

"Oh, gosh, yes,” Shelton said. “There’s tons of people riding. I like meeting people. You know, young kids really like listening to podcasts. I thought to myself, with the people I've met out there, they're a lot more interesting than these podcast guests. They have great stories. So I enjoy that."

Perhaps Shelton’s podcast could be called stories from the bike path.

"That could be a thing,” Shelton laughs. "There's one guy out here, he's 90 years old. He cuts his own grass, he does his own weed eating. And every morning at 6:30, he's off the island driving to Planet Fitness.”