Police motorcycles: from the American motor officer's Harley to the Garde républicaine's BMW

Motorcycle culturePolice motorcyclesA century of service

In 1908, the Detroit police force took delivery of its first Harley-Davidson; in Paris, nine officers climbed onto Blériot machines at the end of 1920. From those beginnings came a whole lineage: Indian and Henderson in the California of the 1930s, the Moto Guzzi Eldorado 850 in the early 1970s, then the patrol Kawasakis that the series CHiPs, aired on NBC from 15 September 1977 to 1 May 1983, turned into icons. France followed its own thread, from the gendarmerie's BMW R50s to the R 1250 RTs of the Garde républicaine motorcycle squadron, created on 1 January 1952.

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1908-1930: when the motorcycle joined the police

The police motorcycle appeared almost at the same time as the motorcycle itself, at a time when the two-wheeler was only just leaving the craftsman's workshop behind — a shift told in our history of the origins of the motorcycle. In 1908, the Detroit Police Department took delivery of its first Harley-Davidson, a belt-driven single-cylinder Model 4 topping out at around sixty kilometres per hour. The Evanston police force, in Illinois, took to the motorcycle as well: its first rider, Leo Larkin, gave the job its American nickname of motor officer. In 1911, in Berkeley, Chief August Vollmer set up one of the first official motorcycle units in the United States.

The argument was simple and purely practical: on a still-embryonic road network, the motorcycle got through where the car bogged down. By the end of the 1920s, some 3,000 American police departments were riding Harley-Davidsons, whileIndian was also carving out a solid share of this emerging market.

In France, the movement came almost at the same moment. It was in Paris, in 1920, that the first motorcycle unit dedicated to traffic policing came into being. At the end of 1920, nine officers of the Paris police prefecture, selected by competitive examination, formed this brigade on Blériot machines; the following year, twelve Indians and Harley-Davidsons replaced them. The mounts of the day had neither brakes nor suspension worthy of the name, the clutch was foot-operated and gears were changed with a lever, on the right of the tank : crashes were frequent.

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California: from Harley to Kawasaki

The California Highway Patrol (CHP) was born of a law signed on 14 August 1929 by Governor C. C. Young. In the 1920s and 1930s, its riders and those of the forces that preceded it rode Indians, Harley-Davidsons and Hendersons; by 1941, the training academy was lining up little more than Harleys and Indians. The American monopoly held until the end of the 1960s.

The turning point came from Mandello del Lario. In November 1968, the LAPD invited a handful of manufacturers to compete for an order of ten machines, and Moto Guzzi was among them. In early 1969, Sergeant Scotty Henderson, of the LAPD traffic division, turned up at the Italian factory to help develop a service version of the V7: the engineers rebored the engine to 750 cc and grafted on a windscreen, panniers, extra lights, a radio and a siren. The V7 750 won them over and joined the fleets of both the LAPD and the CHP.

In the early 1970s, California was openly looking for a successor to the Harley, at the very moment when the Japanese four-cylinders born of the Honda CB750 were reshuffling the deck. The LAPD and the CHP bought in numbers the Moto Guzzi Eldorado 850, launched in 1972 at 1,985 dollars: under 270 kg on the scales against nearly 360 for a Harley FLH, and a shorter wheelbase, precious for everyday U-turns.

In the end it was Akashi that scooped the pot. The police line from Kawasaki derived from the 900 Z1 and came in four series: the Z1-P (a 1975 Z1 900 converted by kit, then factory-assembled from 1976), the KZ900 Police Special (1977) — its C-2 version, built in 1976 at the Kawasaki plant in Lincoln, Nebraska, was developed with the help of the racing driver and car designer Dan Gurney, whose California workshop handled the police preparation; one example donated by the CHP is now held at the Smithsonian —, the KZ1000C (1978-1981), the first Kawasaki designed from the outset for law enforcement and powered by the 1,015 cc Z1 engine, then the famous KZ1000P (1982-2005), which switched to the “J” engine of 998 cc and was produced until September 2005.

The CHP then switched camps: it adopted the BMW R 1100 RT-P from 1996, won over by an unprecedented financial arrangement — 15,828 dollars a machine against 7,871 for the rival Kawasaki, but bought back at 9,928 dollars by the manufacturer after 60,000 miles, a net cost of some 5,900 dollars. In 2013, a public tender brought the Harley-Davidson Electra Glide back to the front rank, with 121 machines ordered. Then, in 2023, the CHP switched to the BMW R 1250 RT-P to renew a fleet of around 415 motorcycles on active duty.

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CHiPs, the series that took the image worldwide

Without a television series, the Californian police motorcycle would have remained a local affair. CHiPs aired on NBC from 15 September 1977 to 1 May 1983 and followed two CHP riders, Jon Baker (Larry Wilcox) and Frank “Ponch” Poncherello (Erik Estrada), on the freeways of Southern California.

The show's strength lay in its material accuracy: the machines on screen were the ones actually in service. Seasons 1 and 2 show Kawasaki Z1-P and KZ900-C2 machines; from season 3, the heroes moved on to the KZ1000-C1. As a result, a big air-cooled four-cylinder with a tall windscreen and side panniers became, for a whole generation and well beyond the United States, the silhouette of the police motorcycle — the fibreglass fairing that would make the KZ1000P universally recognisable only arrived with the next series, in 1982. Even today, restored KZPs are snapped up and several examples are preserved in American museums, from the Motorcycle Hall of Fame to the New York City Police Museum.

🏍️ Minus the flashing light and the siren, plus the presence: these service silhouettes are collectable in scale form too, over on the side of miniature motorcycles.

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France: gendarmerie and police nationale

On the French side, it all starts with an administrative remit: traffic policing was assigned to the gendarmerie in 1928. The institution then created mixed brigades — gendarmes on foot, on horseback and on motorcycles — and in the early 1930s equipped itself from the French manufacturer Dollar, based in Joinville-le-Pont, which delivered 300 machines with Chaise engines of 246 cc. In October 1945, a circular ordered the creation of a fifteen-man motorcycle brigade in the main town of every département; in 1965 came the motorised platoons at group level, followed the very next year by the first motorway units, on the Paris-Lyon route. In 1999, the motorway squadrons gave way to the departmental road safety squadrons (EDSR), which brought motorised brigades and motorway platoons under a single command.

The police nationale followed a parallel thread: the motorcycle traffic brigades were folded into the CRS by a circular of 9 March 1953 under the name of motorcycle platoons, which became motorcycle sections in each company in 1964.

The machines, for their part, trace a long loyalty to Munich. Until 1975, the gendarmerie rode black 500 cc BMW R50 machines, then the 600 cc R60/5; the R60/7 arrived in 1978, this time in blue and with a fairing. From 1992 to 1996, motorised brigades and mobile units received the 740 cc K75 fitted with ABS, while the Garde républicaine inherited the 1,000 cc K100 . Then came the 1100s in 1996, the 1150s in 2000, then a Yamaha interlude with the FJR1300 from 2005, a return to the BMW R1200RT between 2012 and 2015, and a new Yamaha cycle from 2016 with some 600 Tracer 900s brought in to replace the TDM 900s. The contract awarded through UGAP then brought back BMW for the police nationale, the gendarmerie and customs, with the F 750 GS, R 1250 GS and R 1250 RT delivered from the first quarter of 2022.

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The Garde républicaine and the presidential escort

Escorting the head of state is a mission apart. As early as 1935, the Groupe spécial de la garde républicaine mobile, at Satory, fielded a motorcycle platoon tasked with accompanying the President of the Republic and senior French and foreign figures. The opening of the international airport atOrly, far further from Paris than Le Bourget, then made the mounted escort impractical: on 1 January 1952, theGarde républicaine motorcycle squadron was created at Maisons-Alfort within the cavalry regiment, with ten riders. The first presidential escort took place on 20 June 1952, for Vincent Auriol, at the presentation of the Croix de guerre 1939-1945 at the École des officiers de la Gendarmerie nationale, in Melun.

Since then the unit has handled the ceremonial escorts of the President of the Republic and of visiting foreign heads of state — from Eisenhower to Khrushchev, from Kennedy to Elizabeth II — but also the securing of sporting events on public roads, starting with the Tour de France since 1953. Based since 2001 at the Rose barracks in Dugny , Seine-Saint-Denis, the squadron numbers around 80 personnel split between a command group and three platoons. Since 2020, it has operated the BMW R 1250 RT for day-to-day duties and the Yamaha Ténéré 700 off-road — a direct line of descent from the spirit of the XT600 Ténéré. Its display team, for its part, rides among other things BMW R 100 Rmachines. Recruitment is open to NCOs and officers who have held a motorcycle licence for at least two years.

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What sets a police motorcycle apart from a standard model

A service motorcycle is not a repainted production bike. The livery and the emergency lights are only the visible part of a very concrete specification, of which the Kawasaki KZ1000P remains the best-documented example: run-flat tyres from Dunlop able to run deflated, a fibreglass fairing incorporating the windscreen and the pursuit lights, folding floorboards in place of footpegs, side panniers, and above all an oversized charging circuit to feed the electronic siren and the radio gear.

That is the real subject: electricity. A patrol machine spends hours at idle, lights flashing and radio on; the alternator, the battery and the wiring loom have to be sized accordingly. Then come the guards — engine bars, leg protectors — because a service bike does go down, and ergonomics designed for slow speeds and tight manoeuvres rather than outright pace. The rest comes down to heavier maintenance: the tyres and pads of a police motorcycle wear out at a rate that bears no comparison with private use — so much so that run-flats, too hungry for rubber and too harsh on the wrists, were eventually dropped in favour of conventional road tyres.

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The rider's job: twelve weeks for a certificate

In France, the gendarmerie rider is trained at the Centre national de formation à la sécurité routière (CNFSR), created in 1963 and based in Fontainebleau since 1967. The path begins with a five-day pre-course, during which the volunteer NCO has to demonstrate dexterity and an ability to learn; successful candidates receive the military driving certificate, which stays valid for two years. The filter is tight: only around six candidates out of ten carry on beyond that week.

Then comes the initial training proper: twelve weeks of intensive work, run three times a year and rewarded with the motorcyclist's certificate. Gendarmes expected to operate on difficult ground top up this foundation with off-road training. The heart of the programme is not speed but fine control : lines, braking, low-speed manoeuvring with a heavily equipped machine — fundamentals that every civilian rider would do well to work on too, starting with cornering technique.

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Cinema and the collective imagination

Cinema seized on this figure very early. Electra Glide in Blue, released on 19 August 1973 and screened at the Cannes Film Festival the same year, is the only film directed by the music producer James William Guercio : Robert Blake plays a highway patrol rider in Arizona, and the title takes its name literally from the Harley-Davidson Electra Glide assigned to him.

Eighteen years later, Terminator 2 (1991) replayed the clash of brands: Robert Patrick's T-1000, disguised as a police officer, rides a Kawasaki KZ1000P while Arnold Schwarzenegger straddles a Harley-Davidson FLSTF Fat Boy. The actor still keeps a hint of bitterness about it, reckoning his service mount far less flattering than his opponent's cruiser. Between the two, CHiPs had lastingly installed the Kawasaki silhouette in popular culture, alongside other motorcycles that became big-screen emblems — the exact reverse of the Easy Rider chopper, the other great American image of the seventies. These machines have become collectors' items in their own right.

🖼️ That imagery — white, black and chrome — works very well on a wall: have a look on the side of motorcycle posters and prints.

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Summary table

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FAQ — Frequently asked questions

• Which is the most iconic American police motorcycle?
  The Kawasaki KZ1000P, an air-cooled 998 cc four-cylinder produced from 1982 to September 2005. It succeeded the Z1-P of 1975, the KZ900 Police Special of 1977 and the KZ1000C of 1978-1981, and remains inseparable from the California Highway Patrol.
• Which motorcycles were ridden in the series CHiPs?
  Kawasakis, like the real CHP riders of the time: Z1-P and KZ900-C2 in seasons 1 and 2, then KZ1000-C1 from season 3. Those models had only a simple windscreen, the fibreglass fairing appearing only with the KZ1000P in 1982. The series aired on NBC from 15 September 1977 to 1 May 1983.
• Which unit escorts the President of the French Republic?
  The Garde républicaine motorcycle squadron, created on 1 January 1952 at Maisons-Alfort. Its first presidential escort dates from 20 June 1952, for Vincent Auriol. It has been based at Dugny since 2001 and has operated the BMW R 1250 RT since 2020.
• What technically sets a police motorcycle apart from a standard model?
  Beyond the livery and the lights, an oversized charging circuit to feed the radio and the siren, panniers, guards, ergonomics suited to slow speeds and, on the Kawasaki KZ1000P, run-flat tyres and folding floorboards.
• How long does the training of a gendarmerie rider last?
  A five-day pre-course at the CNFSR in Fontainebleau, based there since 1967, leads to the military driving certificate, valid for two years. The initial motorcyclist training then lasts twelve weeks, run three times a year, topped up with off-road training for gendarmes posted to difficult ground.

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