Flashback Friday: Keeping Sioux Falls Safe on two wheels

Yahoo

04-04-2025

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (KELO) – Motorcycle engines are warming up along with the spring temperatures around KELOLAND.
In this week's Flashback Friday, Keloland's Jaine Andrews takes us back to 1984 and shows us how cops were keeping Sioux Falls safe on two wheels.
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The motorcycle cop: he's a rare breed Sioux Falls has only four such officers men who are willing to endure the summer months without air conditioning riding around on two wheeled motorized cycles.
'I'm not closed up so much in one spot, if you're in a car, if you see someone in a car usually you don't want to go over and bother them, but if they're sitting on a motorcycle or more or less out in the open your not as as much afraid to interrupt them or disturb their little privacy,' Officer John Mataya said.
The cycle police work the city much like a regular officer in a car but on more than one occasion they've been known to catch a slightly less than law abiding citizen by surprise.
'Usually when I was working at night they can't tell as easily one bike from the other,' Mataya said.
This life isn't all glamour, the temperature on the bike is thirty degrees warmer than outside. There isn't much room to carry things. And saddle sores among the officers are not at all uncommon. Perhaps the only advantage to this job.
'You get a heck of a tan,' Mataya said.
Jaine Andrews, Keloland News.
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