BLACKSBURG -- David Cole, a 37-year-old Blacksburg police officer, is dressed in black high-top Timberlands, a bike helmet and a white golf shirt stretched tight over a bulletproof vest.

He goes by his nickname "Chico."

Cole is a bicycle officer. His beat is downtown Blacksburg. Five days a week, he rides a 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. shift on his black-and-white, 24-speed Trek mountain bike.

For much of his shift, Cole rides a rectangle loop that takes him most often down North Main to College, down College to Otey, up Otey to West Roanoke and back up to North Main. Along the way, people yell "Chico," "Chico," "Chico" from open windows and sidewalks, as if the officer were riding in a bike race.

Often he stops mid-loop and ducks into a hidden driveway next to Cabo Fish Taco to eye passing traffic.

On a recent afternoon, Cole was camped out in another favorite spot -- the sidewalk next to Poor Billy's-- explaining why he likes being a bike officer when he rode off in mid-sentence to chase after a brown Jeep Cherokee. Pumping the pedals, he caught the Jeep at a South Main traffic light, rode up to the driver's side and tapped on the window.

"I want to talk to you a second," Cole said and instructed the driver to pull down West Roanoke Street and stop at the curb by Bent Light Pictures.

The Virginia Tech student's license plate was were expired, but he had an excuse. His parents had renewed the plates and the stickers hadn't arrived in the mail yet.

Cole let him go without a ticket after verifying the story with a dispatcher who checked Department of Motor Vehicles records.

As he rides through town, Cole targets speeding drivers, crosswalk violators and sidewalk bikers (yes, that's illegal). Most of all, he looks for outdated plates, town stickers and vehicle inspections. He also carries four or five books of 25 parking tickets.

For all the stops he makes and the number of tickets he hands out, Cole said most people drive off with a warning.

"Most people don't notice they are doing something wrong," he said. "It's nothing to catch a person doing double the speed limit and they don't even notice."

A new old idea

Police officers astride rugged mountain bikes with electronic sirens on the bars and radar guns tucked in their saddle bags may seem modern. But the concept is not a new one. In the 19th century, police patrolled urban areas mostly on foot but also rode bicycles and horses.

In the early 20th century, police cars replaced most foot and other types of patrols. Paired with the police radio and central dispatch, squad cars allowed fewer officers to work much larger areas.

But these new technologies had a downside, said Isaac Van Patten, a criminal justice professor at Radford University. An officer on foot would stop and "get Old Mother Hubbard to tell him what was going on in the back alleys," Van Patten said. More modern police were sequestered in their cars away from the community, responding to radio calls for help.

Bike patrols sprouted up again in many American cities in the late 1980s and early 1990s as one way to make police more visible. The movement dovetailed with the mountain bike boom, which brought a more durable bicycle seemingly made for police work.

Blacksburg has had a bike patrol officer assigned to each of its three shifts since 1997. Police agencies at Virginia Tech and Radford also have bike patrols. Christiansburg officers and Montgomery County Sheriff's deputies use bikes to patrol the Huckleberry Trail and for special operations.

Blacksburg Police Chief Bill Brown said aside from the high number of citations written by his bike officers, their most-important role is improving the public image of police in town.

"It's putting the officer back in touch with the people," Brown said.

And people like bikes, he said, especially children.

Photographer Paul Rossi has gotten to know Cole well since he opened Bent Light Pictures in 1997.

He said he came to like Cole because of the friendly way he deals with the drivers he pulls over in front of the studio. Now, the two men have a long chat about once a month.

Rossi is sold on the idea of bike patrols. "It gives you the feeling that you know someone in the police force if you did need help with something," he said. "The world would be a better place if they were all on bikes."

Retiring on two wheels

Several hours after pulling over the brown Jeep, Cole was again standing next to Poor Billy's when a mother walked up to him with her 3-year-old son, assuring him that Cole was a real police officer.

Cole dug into his saddle bag and produced a plastic police shield and pinned it onto the boy's shirt, an act he said he does several times a week.

"You help me keep law and order, OK? Give me five," he said to the boy.

With a stumpy physique more like a power-lifter's than the thin tightness of a serious cyclist, Cole seems an unlikely prospect to tie his career to two wheels. He wasn't an avid rider in 1997 when, with eight years on the job, he volunteered for a five-day bike training at the Roanoke Police Academy.

At the academy, Cole says he realized how demanding the job would be. In addition to the 40-mile rides and obstacle courses that included riding up and down flights of stairs, he remembers the 1½-mile sprints of the firearms course.

"The worst part was you had to wear your ear protection. All you can hear is your breathing getting more and more ragged," he said.

That was nine year's worth of pedal strokes ago. Now the toughest part of the job isn't the physical endurance. It's the winter cold and burning summer afternoons.

Deep into fall, Cole is still tanned a walnut brown. Soon he will trade his shorts for winter gear. He has the option to ride in a car if it is raining hard or freezing, but aside from a few days a year, he rarely takes it.

Cole said he plans to keep pedaling until he retires. He has already taken himself out of the running for a promotion several times.

Moving up means moving off the bike.

"I like this job," he said. "It may get cold. It may be hot. But just to be able to be out here getting exercise, talking to people you know. It's great."