NYPD Bike Patrol: It’s Officially a Trend

After two readers sent us pictures of bike cops in March, we promised to give a Streetfilms T-shirt to the person who sent us a third pic. It took two months, but today we received the photo that puts the bicycling police officer story over the hump -- now it's a trend! Congratulations to Hilda, who takes the prize in dramatic fashion with this shot of four officers on bike patrol. We might have to throw in an extra T-shirt for the calf tattoo.

There seems to be a concentration of cycling officers in Midtown. All of our reader-submitted photos (the first of which also came from Hilda) were taken between 34th Street and 44th Street, west of Sixth Avenue. I saw a bike cop on Hester Street on my way to work last week, though, so they range downtown too. We'll see if NYPD's public information office will divulge whether the department has actually beefed up its bike patrols or if these guys have been out on the streets, unheralded, all along. While we're at it, we'll ask if they track how many officers participate in Bike to Work Day this Friday.