By Rose Laudicina
Staff Writer
It took Carrboro police two years to accumulate 59 bikes, and less than 20 minutes to get rid of them.
For the second time in four years, the Carrboro Police Department chose to donate the bikes they have been accumulating to the ReCYCLEry NC, a local nonprofit organization that teaches bicycle-repair skills and provides bicycles to children and adults without them.
Five police officers and four volunteers from the ReCYCLEry extricated the bikes from their holding cell beneath Carrboro Town Hall and stacked them in the back of pickup trucks to be driven the short distance to the ReCYCLEry on Friday afternoon.
“Ninety-nine percent of the bikes turned in are found property,†Lt. Anthony Westbrook said as he stood in a dimly lit room underneath Town Hall filled wall to wall with bikes.
“By North Carolina state law we are required to hold them for 60 days,†Westbrook said. “Then after that we can either auction them off with the proceeds going to schools or donate them to a 501(c)(3) charity.â€
While the department has auctioned off bikes before, this time they turned to the ReCYCLEry to donate the bikes.
“This just seems like a natural partnership,†said Richard Giorgi, a founding member of the ReCYCLEry.
“Where else would they donate them to, but somewhere in their backyard?†he added.
The ReCYCLEry NC was founded to teach repair and maintenance skills to anyone who wants to learn and promote bicycles as a safe mode of transportation.
Community members who attend free workshops at the ReCYCLEry have the opportunity to build their own bike out of parts that have been donated to the organization as long as they complete a certain number of volunteer hours.
Through donations like the one from the Carrboro Police Department, the ReCYCLEry is able to keep a steady array of bikes to be fixed up or used as parts.
In addition to teaching maintenance skills, the ReCYCLEry donates repaired bikes to children and sponsors a youth cycling team called Spoke N Revolutions, which works with underserved youth.
While donations come in waves, with bicycles in varying conditions, Giorgi said this donation from the police department contained a lot of high-quality bikes, including one he valued at around $700, which would most likely be fixed up instead of broken down for parts.
In addition to receiving bikes from the police department, the ReCYCLEry will be getting four new volunteers.
As part of a new program being implemented in the department called Fit for Duty, Westbrook said four out of 38 sworn officers, including himself, will be attending Thursday night workshop classes to learn about bicycle maintenance and earn their own bikes to help them get into shape.
Through the Fit for Duty program, the department is also partnering with Whole Foods to learn healthy eating and Fleet Feet to help officers meet the new department-mandated fitness standard.
“We hope it will increase efficiency,†Westbrook said of the new program.
While Westbrook said he hasn’t ridden a bike since high school, he is optimistic and looking forward to earning a bike he can use on long-distance rides and bike races.
Giorgi too was optimistic.
“Everyone remembers how to ride a bike,†he said.
I inquired about prisoner reCycling which I have seen elsewhere when I was in the RENA community. No one had heard of such a thing. This is also a project where bicycles are refurbished but it is done by Inmates and the bicycles are given to children of the community for Christmas. Police collect and hold the bikes as the law requires, then they are given to a group of prisoners who refurbish them and learn a skill they can use upon their return to society. Pictures and video of the children receiving the bikes just before Christmas makes a huge impact on the prison population.
cw