Cop Bikes

Oof..... that is not a good look for Harley.
 
Pretty sure I posted this somewhere else before. TPS was testing BMW as well way back in 2011.

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Back home most of the police bikes are Honda ST1300s, Yamaha FJR1300As and Suzuki DRZ400s for offroad. They also use stuff like R1s and GSXR1000s as unmarked bikes. The police id have interactions with always liked the Hondas and laughed when wed talk about north america and their Harleys.
 
nobbie48 said:
Will the lower machismo factor transfer to the police? How about ebikes for city patrols?

When my brother was a M/C cop 50 years ago he said it cost more to put a police bike on the road than a police car.
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Back in the 90's Detroit city police had a few honda rebels, picture if you will a 400LB fella wobbling down the sidewalk trying to write a few parking tickets.
 
Dirty Frank said:
Back in the 90's Detroit city police had a few honda rebels, picture if you will a 400LB fella wobbling down the sidewalk trying to write a few parking tickets.
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In the TV show CHiPs they ran Japanese, possibly Yamaha. I'm not sure what the real CHP ran.
 
nobbie48 said:
In the TV show CHiPs they ran Japanese, possibly Yamaha. I'm not sure what the real CHP ran.
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Just watched a re-run of that show today. Had to look hard and they seem to have used Kawasaki Police Specials. The show today was about a rival biker group trying to reclaim an old race title. Even their bikes were Kawasaki's.
 
Toronto Police had CB750Ps and even some CB750 Automatics back in the day. The cops wrecked them on purpose.
 
Merkid said:
Even their bikes were Kawasaki's.
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Maybe because that TV show was sponsored by Kawasaki. The CHPs TV show was basically a commercial for Kawasaki.
In the '70s the "cop bike" market was in flux and there was a gas crunch on.
LAPD was looking for new bike (they has been using Guzzi T3s, but were running out of parts) (the papal police still use T3s)
Toronto police got some Z1 Kawis around this time... and they were criminally inadequate. The bikes couldn't support all that weight and would squash the suspension and break the rear frames. The Toronto cop bikes ended up at McBrides, where they got up rated shocks and springs and a reinforced frame. After modification they were quite successful.
Toronto police got a couple of DOHC CB750s, and CB900s around 1980, some BMW boxers after that... and they were all shunned and sat at 2 traffic rotting into the ground.
Toronto police had some Yamaha TT600s to patrol off road... and they would chase us on our dirt bikes at Centennial Park. They weren't very good at it, but if you slowed down so you didn't lose them they would chase you for hours. Fun times.
That KZ cop bike with the air cooled "J" motor was produced until 2006.
 
Depending on the municipality or in the US a county , there was for years a mandate to source domestic vehicles . You could not get a purchase order passed to buy a Japanese or Euro product no matter how much better suited to the job that product was .
Good friend is a mechanic for a regional police service , they have ,and use Harley , he likes that servicing is fairly easy and the budget to maintain is almost unlimited whereas funding to replace is harder .


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In Greece when things were a little topsy turvy we watched two cops roll up on a police issue moped (maybe a scooter - it was tiny)
 
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