Temple University's Urban Bike Team
How a bike team is growing community safety through youth cycling
It's 8 a.m. on a hot summer Sunday morning in Hammonton, New Jersey. A group of urban youth that lives in North Philadelphia assembles, quickly adjusting bike saddles, tightening helmet straps and checking their water bottles as they prepare to embark on their most challenging ride yet. Temperatures have already eclipsed 80 degrees, and in just a few hours they’ll approach triple digits.
The heat does not faze Temple police officer of 15 years Leroy Wimberly, though. He gathers the group in a huddle to celebrate the significance of how far they have come to reach this day.
Wimberly and the young group are part of Temple University's newly created Urban Bike Team, a creative initiative started by Temple police officers to teach leadership skills to elementary school students and middle schoolers in North Philadelphia through bike safety training, community bike rides and mentorship.
“Stay together and ride like a team,” Wimberly said to the group. “Today is history for us. We are going to cross that finish line like a team.” Despite waking up at 5 a.m. to make the long drive to the starting line, the boys are alert. They hang on Wimberly’s every word.
“Because we are a team, right?” Wimberly asks firmly. The group responds with a round of “yes sirs.”
The buildup to this day—to this moment—was no small undertaking. The team members spent 18 weeks training. They went from having little experience of bike riding to developing the stamina for a 30-mile bike ride from Hammonton to Atlantic City. They rode together, learned together and trained together.
So despite the heat and mixed emotions, each participant at the starting line was ready to ride for the first time alongside Temple Police and thousands of other cyclists in the 35th Annual Ben to the Shore Tour, a charity bike ride to support children in the Greater Philadelphia and South Jersey areas.
"Bang!"
A short blast from the starting gun signals the young riders to push off, and they begin their long journey to Atlantic City. Monica Hankins-Padilla, of external relations for Campus Safety Services, sets the pace for the team, and the group follows her lead, shifting into the formations on the road that they have been practicing for months.
The stakes are significant, and Hankins-Padilla knows that the riders will have to overcome various emotions to make it to the finish line since it is their first time riding to Atlantic City.
“I was going through the emotional roller coaster with them. There are a lot of emotions and changes that you go through as you are riding from the mental and physical challenges of being excited one moment to getting tired the next,” she said. “You have to factor in the heat too.”
Biking toward stronger police-youth relationships
Hankins-Padilla founded Temple’s Urban Bike Team in the summer of 2021 as a way to build stronger police-youth relationships, keep young boys and girls in school and reduce violence in North Philadelphia. The annual program starts in November and ends in August.
Over the last 20 years, Hankins-Padilla, along with other officers from Campus Safety Services, has been teaching bike safety and life skills to youth in the Norris Homes community, along with local schools and community spaces like recreational centers in North Philadelphia.
In addition, Hankins-Padilla, Wimberly and the other Urban Bike Team leaders have taught bike safety classes through the Gang Resistance Education and Training (G.R.E.A.T) program to children in nearby Philadelphia schools, including Paul L. Dunbar Elementary School, Tanner Duckrey School, Carver High School and St. Malachy Catholic School.
G.R.E.A.T. is a gang and violence prevention program sponsored by the U.S. Department of Justice that has been building relationships between police departments and communities both nationally and internationally for nearly 30 years.
“The groups were learning about decision-making and responsibility, along with learning about the rules of the road, but at the end of the program they started asking, ‘so where are the bikes?’”, Hankins-Padilla said. She became determined to answer this question, not knowing that it would eventually lead her to the creation of the Urban Bike Team.
Getting enough funds to finance a bike safety program that could provide youth that live in North Philadelphia with bikes was not a simple task. So the Campus Safety Services team started to think about ways to boost their fundraising efforts, which led Hankins-Padilla to start hosting events for the program.
It was around this time that a chance phone call from Temple University Trustee Phillip C. Richards, FOX ‘62, HON ‘16, turned the program’s fortunes around. Richards explained he was doing a community program in his hometown of Easton, Pa., and he added that he was also looking for an organization at Temple to facilitate a program that gives back to the North Philadelphia community.
Hankins-Padilla explained her vision for the Temple bike safety program to Richards, and he was sold.
Thanks to Richards’ support, Temple’s Campus Safety Services was able to surprise 200 North Philadelphia schoolchildren with brand new bicycles and helmets. The donation inspired the Campus Safety team to start thinking more about how they could maintain a bike program for urban youth in North Philadelphia.
Nathan and Edward Walker were among 200 North Philadelphia schoolchildren surprised with free bicycles.
Nathan and Edward Walker were among 200 North Philadelphia schoolchildren surprised with free bicycles.
Photograph by: Mike Sperando
When Families Behind the Badge Children's Foundation, a nonprofit that builds positive relationships between police officers and the children in the communities they serve, learned about their idea they were eager to help. The nonprofit decided to give Temple’s bike program a donation every year for the work it does with urban youth and fundraising in the community. For the inaugural year of the Urban Bike Team, Families Behind the Badge donated $10,000 to fund Temple’s Urban Bike Team, including 10 bikes for this year’s cohort.
For Hankins-Padilla, this is just the beginning. She is already thinking about how to expand Temple’s Urban Bike Team program. In October, the program received a $100,000 donation from an anonymous donor, which will be distributed in annual increments of $20,000 over the next five years.
It plans to use the funds to donate 400 bikes each year to children ages 7–13 years old who live in the neighborhoods around neighboring ZIP codes that surround Temple’s campus. As part of the donation, the members will receive bike-related equipment, including clothing and helmets. An additional six-week bike safety course will be offered by the program. The donation will also help finance additional bike trips, allowing the Urban Bike Team to ride in other communities outside of North Philadelphia, such as Cape May and Atlantic City. The officers want these children to explore other communities and learn more about people around them.
The Urban Bike Team is also working to grow its partnerships with other organizations to have a program that is more accessible to children at Temple University Hospital who are interested in joining the team, along with more local schools and community spaces in North Philadelphia.
Building future leaders one mile at a time
“Our work is not just about giving bicycles to youth groups, but there is also an educational element to our program,” said Captain Eileen Bradley, a retired police officer and project coordinator in the Campus Safety Services’ division of community external relations.
"We're teaching them the safe way to cross streets, stay in bike lanes and make sure they are always wearing a helmet and that their bike is in good shape.”
Wimberly agrees the program is educational. He said Temple’s bike program enables urban youth to learn how to assemble each part of their bikes from the frame up.
“They all receive a bike, but they have to build it themselves,” he explains. “It builds confidence when a young person can look at what they achieved, and it is also part of the life skills we teach. It's about learning the mechanics of a bike and maintaining it.”
In addition to assembling their bikes, the team went on rides in areas of Philadelphia and Cape May two to three times a week, where they received bike safety training from Campus Safety officers in preparation for the event ride to Atlantic City.
“We help build their stamina and physical training,” Wimberly said. “We do so by riding in several places like from Temple to Kelly Drive, the Philadelphia Museum of Art and Conshohocken and transporting the bikes to Cape May so that they can ride on different trails in the area.”
“This experience has taught me to keep pedaling, don't give up and just keep pushing to get to the point you want to be.”
“30 miles was a lot, but I knew I had gotten this far, so I told myself I had to push through, I had to finish.”
Symeer Zeigler, a 13-year-old member of the bike team, adds that building stamina took time.
“We didn’t get to 30 miles in one day. We practiced riding at 8 miles, 15 miles, 20 miles and then 25 miles to get us here so that we wouldn't be that tired,” Zeigler said. “This experience has taught me to keep pedaling, don't give up and just keep pushing to get to the point you want to be.”
“30 miles was a lot, but I knew I had gotten this far, so I told myself I had to push through, I had to finish,” 13-year-old Quadrice Quarles said.
“One thing I learned about these bike rides is that as tiring as going uphill is, eventually you always get to have fun riding downhill. You have to earn it, though,” he laughed.
And earn it they did.
Sweating, exhausted but triumphant, the team finished the Atlantic City ride in the same way they started: together. They were greeted by cheering friends, family, volunteers and supporters at the finish line at Showboat Hotel, and after catching their own breath, the police officers proudly presented each boy with a medal.
“I feel so accomplished and happy for them,” Hankins-Padilla said. “Some of them at the start of the program were hesitant to ride bikes, but after trying it now they say, ‘let's do it.’”
Another member of the bike team, Quadir Staton, a 13-year-old student at the Paul L. Dunbar School, said he learned leadership skills through the bike program and he enjoyed riding in the charity event.
“The team has taught me how to be a leader, and Officer Wimberly taught us that you always have chances and choices,” Staton said. “When you ride a bike, you just get this nice breeze. It’s freeing. And when other riders go past you it motivates you to keep going because you know you will get through it,” Staton said.
He added, "It feels good that others are willing to reach out and help people like me.”
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