Off road Police bikes were in force to combat ilegal off roading in Stourbridge.

Express & Star

Stevens Park in Wollescote, Stourbridge has a problem with off road bikers, as do many parks. Police were out on scrambler bikes and took chase of an ilegal rider.

Transcript

00:00Yeah, so if you just don't mind introducing yourself, so I'm Grant Allen, obviously, yeah,

00:05we sound very well known. Yeah, so what are we doing here today? So today the Forest Traffic

00:09Team are here supporting Up Advance with the Dudley LPA and the Hale Zone Neighbourhood Team.

00:15So I'm here as part of one of the off-road bikers. So we saw you, we saw you sort of take off as

00:20soon as we got here, sort of take off after we already we saw one person on an off-road bike

00:25going off. Can you just talk a little bit about what happened in that? Yeah, so this area has

00:29over the last few months, it's had problems and complaints of people using the parkland to

00:35ride off-road bikes and it's causing a nuisance to every other member of the public that's using

00:40the park. So me and the traffic teams can come and we can help to try and solve that problem,

00:47that's why we're here today. Absolutely, yeah, and can we know sort of like a little bit about

00:51the chase itself at all? Can we know about that? So the chase itself, as with any chase,

00:58any pursuit, it comes with its own dangers and we need to manage those risks because at the end

01:07of the day everyone's safety is our responsibility. So we've always got to be mindful of that with

01:13every pursuit we have. Absolutely, yeah, perfect. So let's just talk a little bit about the bikes

01:17itself then because these are pretty cool off-road bikes aren't they, these ones. So

01:20can we just talk a little bit about the bikes that you're utilising for this? Yep, so we have

01:23a fleet of six Honda CRF300s, we've had them for about 12 months now. They've recently been fitted

01:32with livery, lights and sirens which gives us a better presence and more capability.

01:38Absolutely, yeah, obviously it gives you the ability to go off-road to pursue these chases

01:42like you're doing today. And just talk a little bit about the train and what the specialist

01:46officers go through. Yeah, so all the off-road bikers, we're also advanced road bike trains,

01:53within West Midlands Police, so we've all had seven weeks of training for that, plus an

01:58additional one week's training for the off-road bikes. That training is very intense, tiring,

02:07dirty and wet, but it is good fun. Absolutely, yeah, not like a bunch of e-bocca-nibbles out

02:13there or anything. No, there's no jumps, no stunts involved at all. No, that's perfect,

02:18thank you very much, that's great, that's brilliant.

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