NYPD, how they roll

Ariel Kaminer has an article in The New York Times about the latest cop gear in New York:

If you haven’t seen them at all, you may soon. Police officers have begun patrolling select subway stations on electric scooters, and visibility is their main selling point.
The vehicles, made by the California company T3 Motion, are used across the country in stadiums, airports, convention centers, department store parking lots, college campuses, and other settings that require security personnel to cover a large area. For the New York Police Department— which has twelve total in use, in the subway, public-housing projects, Yankee Stadium, and Citi Field— they are a new tool for community policing that consumes far less energy than a car and far fewer oats than a horse.
The scooters— the company calls them “zero gas emissions all-electric vehicles”— can go at a leisurely one mile per hour or book it at twenty. Each can turn on its own axis. With an extra battery (so that one can recharge while the other runs) they can go 24/7. They emit no nasty fumes and, after the initial retail cost of $8,900, cost about ten cents a day to use.
Unlike horses, which make officers tower above the crowd, or motorcycles and bicycles, which position them below pedestrians, the scooters place riders nine inches above the ground; high enough to see over people without intimidating them. “I always thought the Number One goal for police was serve and protect,” said Ki Nam, the company’s founder and president, “but it’s really community relations. They want to be close to the community. They want to be a command presence, yet approachable.”
In the four subway stations where these flashy Robocop gizmos are in use— Times Square, the Port Authority, Grand Central, and Coney Island— people do, indeed, approach the officers. Some ask directions or seek assistance. Others just gawk at the flashy Robocop gizmos.
The scooters are not legal for street use in the city, which may be one reason the police were reluctant to let me take one for a joy ride. But T3 Motion was happy to send one over, and I gave it a shot a half-block from Times Square.
At first glance, a T3 looks like a Segway, the gyroscopic “self-balancing human transporter”, as its creators call it, that the Police Department already tried and abandoned. (Unfortunate timing, since the company’s owner recently died when the Segway he was riding apparently pitched him off the edge of a cliff.) But, unlike the Segway, a two-wheeled ride that requires careful balance, the T3 sits steadily on three wheels.
It’s easy to master: rotate the right-hand grip to go. Swivel the handlebars to turn. Squeeze the brake to stop. As for stance, the company’s chairman, who was nice enough to give me a quick lesson, had a suggestion: “Stand like you’re going to... ” He paused. Going to what? “I was going to say, like you’re going to shoot a gun,” he said.
As I stepped aboard and turned the accelerator, the scooter lurched out from under me. Pedestrians darting out of my way heard me trying to yell at it to stop, which was embarrassing and also, for the record, not very effective. My hand found its way to the brake; thankfully, a few yards before my scooter would have found its way to a plate-glass window.
I reset the control panel for a top speed of 5 m.p.h., which made for much smoother acceleration and much less collateral damage. Within a few minutes, I had the thing under control and I was zipping around the block with a huge grin on my face, doing zero-turn-radius doughnuts to impress passers-by.
“That is the coolest thing I’ve ever seen!” someone said. Someone else said that it was only for lazy people (except he chose a more colorful word than “people”). “That is incredibly middle-aged,” said a friend I was hoping to impress. Well, I was having fun.
For patrolling a big event or traversing big distances, T3 scooters seem like ideal tools, an energy-efficient mix of speed and agility. For navigating a semicrowded subway station, they can seem a little ridiculous.
Most people who need to get from the Seventh Avenue side of the 42nd Street station over to the shuttle platform just hop down the quarter-flight of stairs. Some take it in a single step.
But two officers on scooters last week had to detour to the wheelchair ramp, then daintily zigzag their way down like a fashion victim in too-high heels. Then, as they threaded their way through the commuters, going barely faster than they would on foot (but wearing tough plastic helmets just in case), they headed toward the 43rd Street exit, where traffic bottlenecks as the passage narrows to about a dozen feet. And there they parked themselves, side by side. Eventually, they went around the bend to a wider, emptier area and zoomed around a bit. Well, they were having fun.
Officer Oscar Carias, who was enjoying his first official day on scooter patrol, said he thought the vehicle’s merits were obvious: better visibility, longer sight lines. And he was loving the feedback. “It’s something new, so people look at us like, ‘Wow!’ ” he said. “The response is one of surprise.”
The Police Department has ordered thirty more scooters for the end of the year. By that time, subway commuters may have stopped gawking— or smirking, as the case may be. But the officers who ride will probably still be grinning like kids with a shiny new toy.