“Walk your bike, please!”

In response to the police officer’s command, the hurried student shouted, “No, I’m late for a midterm!”

“Then he rode off even faster,” officer Ralph Nuno recalled. He gave chase from the south side of the Memorial Union to the Silo, made the stop — and slapped the bicyclist with a ticket.

It was the first and only ticket Nuno has given out since he was assigned to bicycle patrol in April, becoming the campus’s first full-time bike officer in at least 10 years.

“This campus just screams for a bike cop,” Police Chief Annette Spicuzza said. “The riding is easy with regards to terrain, and we have so many bicyclists on campus that they should be patrolled by a bike officer.”

Nuno, a full-fledged law enforcement officer, has given out far more Biking Right Reward Program coupons than tickets. The coupons — worth $7 at the Silo — are the university’s way of saying thanks for following the rules.

And he has been reminding other students to do the same, with gentle admonitions such as “Walk your bike, please.”

While being interviewed by Dateline one recent afternoon near the MU flagpole, Nuno advised at least a half-dozen people to dismount — people who either did not see or ignored the signs that show a bicycle in a circle with a red slash running across it.

Bike riding is also prohibited along Centennial Walk through the Quad.

But by far the most violations have to do with running stop signs and failure to yield to people in crosswalks, Nuno said.

“They’ve got everybody trained to stop for them,” he said. “We’ve got to reverse that.”

He said he will be developing education and training programs, and he will participate in new-student orientations this summer, to explain the campus’s bicycling rules.

Bicyclists on campus “have got everybody trained to stop for them,” he said.

“We’ve got to reverse that.”

And, come fall, there will be no grace period for violations. “Let’s start it out right,” he said.

If Nuno is coming after you, you may see the flashing red and blue lights on his bike’s handlebars. Or you may hear the bike’s siren — unless your ears are otherwise occupied, say, with earbuds connected to a music player or phone.

He recalled a bicyclist who was wearing earbuds in both ears — and had no idea that Nuno was riding next to him, trying to get him to walk his bicycle.

“He was waving to his friends in front of the MU, and I’m riding alongside, smiling and waving, too,” Nuno said. The bicyclist’s friends laughed as they watched the scene unfold.

Finally, Nuno got the bicyclist to stop. “I’ll bet he never rides his bike through here again!”

The bicyclist also broke the law that prohibits riding with earbuds in both ears. You can have one earbud in, but not two.

Cell phones are a different matter, Nuno said. There are no laws against talking on your phone or texting while riding a bike — although Nuno advises against doing either.

Bicycle patrol takes in more than bicycle violations. Nuno responds to other police calls, too, and his bicycle can take him where police cars cannot go, like down in the arboretum.

“Bikes are the quickest response,” he said, “and, often, the last thing a suspect is expecting is a police officer on a bike.”

‘Extremely slow riding’

Nuno previously worked as a bike officer in Oakland, and, like several other UC Davis police officers, he is state-certified as a bike officer — meaning that he is trained in how to approach and stop suspects; take them down if necessary, by jumping from his bicycle; and how to fire his weapon from his bike.

He also is trained in “extremely slow riding,” so that he can keep careful watch on what is going on around him.

But he can ride fast, too. He has two modes of transportation: an electric scooter that can go 35 mph and a mountain bike that goes “as fast as I can pedal.”

Nuno put in 20 years with the Oakland Police Department before joining the UC Davis police force in January.

“In Oakland, all we did was call after call after call,” he said. “Here we can be proactive, addressing issues before they become problems.”

He said people, for the most part, are receptive to his presence on bike patrol. “They are thanking me for being out here, saying a lot of bicyclists are just out of control,” he said.

Chief Spicuzza described Nuno as “a natural” for the bike patrol. “He loves what he’s doing and is very community oriented,” she said. “He wants to be involved. He’s truly enjoying it, and you can tell.”

Indeed, Nuno said: “This job is just so much fun, day in and day out. Obviously, there is a serious side, and police work can be dangerous.

“But this place is so refreshing. When I smile at people from a bicycle, they smile back. And they know my name and ask me, ‘How’s it going?’ They would never do that if I was in a car.”

All of which says to him, after 20 years on the streets of Oakland, “People really like me!”