Leave it to the Hub City to turn a simple Sunday afternoon drive into a high-stakes episode of COPS: Sky Police. Our local heroes at the LPD teamed up with DPS to launch a “proactive operation,” which is law-enforcement speak for “we used our helicopter to watch you people behave like idiots from a safe distance.” Between 1:00 p.m. and 9:00 p.m., while the rest of us were questioning our life choices at Brunch, the DPS Aircraft Operations Division was hovering over the Loop, proving that if you’re going to go 120 mph on a motorcycle, you should probably check for a literal eye in the sky first.
Ground crews eventually nabbed two geniuses—Dominic Martinez and Joshua Schreiber—who apparently thought the South Loop was the qualifying track for the MotoGP. One was hauled in for racing and evading, while the other was picked up the next day after presumably realizing that a 2000-pound helicopter is, in fact, faster than a Kawasaki. The police were quick to remind us they aren’t “spying,” which is comforting. They’re just watching from the clouds to make sure your “lane splitting” doesn’t turn into a permanent “pavement decorating” session.
Meanwhile, the rest of the biking community is trying to explain that they aren’t all auditioning for Fast & Furious: West Texas Drift. Local riders like Christopher Cogdill are out here pleading for drivers to actually use their eyes, noting that Texas kills about one motorcyclist a day. It’s a fun paradox: half the city is riding like they have a respawn button, while the other half is being ignored by distracted SUV drivers who couldn’t see a Harley-Davidson if it was parked in their living room.
Of course, the “visibility” issue gets a lot darker when the LPD’s story starts shifting. Take the tragic case of Timothy Bond Jr., a Patriot Guard Rider who lost his life on 42nd and Memphis. While his mother and friends—who have actually seen video of the wreck—point to a hit-and-run involving a car that blew a stop sign, the LPD is currently scratching its collective head, suggesting he might have just “lost control.” It’s a classic Lubbock move: we have enough technology to track a speeder from space, but when it comes to a fatal wreck at a city intersection, suddenly the facts get as blurry as a dust storm on I-20.
Isn’t it great that we have the aerial tech to bust a 23-year-old for speeding, but when a mother asks for the “truth” about a fatal hit-and-run, the official response is basically a shrug and a “maybe he just fell over”?
