Run With The Cops Draws 334 Joggers, 28 "Brisk Walking" Participants, One Man With Radar Gun

WAUKESHA — The Waukesha Police Department's 14th annual Run With The Cops drew 362 participants to Veterans Park on Friday morning, a field that department organizers described as "a good turnout" and that one attendee described, with considerably more precision, as "334 runners, 28 brisk walkers, and myself."

That attendee was Ned England, 70, of Backslide Way, who arrived at the 8 a.m. event in a lawn chair positioned roughly 40 feet past the starting line with a handheld radar gun he has previously used to clock hospital-bound traffic on his own street. England said he was not registered as a runner, did not intend to run, and had come strictly "to collect data."

"Somebody has to time this thing honestly," England said.

Eight Forty-Seven

By his own tally, England clocked 187 individual participants over the course of the event, recording each pace by hand in a spiral notebook before transferring the figures to a spreadsheet that evening. He calculated the field's average pace at 8 minutes 47 seconds per mile, with a fastest recorded split of 6 minutes 12 seconds, attributed to a runner England later identified, through a combination of bib number and process of elimination, as a 34-year-old accountant from the west side.

"I don't know his name. I know his pace and I know he works in accounting, because he told the woman next to him at the water table," England said. "I wrote that down too."

England said he did not clock the 28 participants he classified as "brisk walkers," a category he defined as anyone whose gait he judged incompatible with an honest radar reading, but noted their number for the record regardless.

"I want to be clear this was not adversarial. I support the police. I support the runners. I am simply the only one who was measuring anything."

— Ned England, Backslide Way

The Email

England submitted his complete findings to the Waukesha Police Department on Saturday via email, in a message titled "Field Notes From August 14 Endurance Event" that ran, by England's own estimate, to roughly 3,000 words. The email included his full pace spreadsheet, a hand-drawn diagram of where he had positioned his lawn chair relative to the starting line, and a section England labeled "Observations, General," which noted that three participants appeared to be walking dogs not listed on the event's waiver form.

Police Sergeant Marcus Webb confirmed the department received the email and said the event was "in line with previous years" in terms of turnout, weather, and post-race donut consumption at the finish line tent. Webb declined to comment further on England's documentation specifically, saying only that the department "appreciates community engagement in all its forms."

Asked whether the radar gun readings would factor into next year's event planning, Webb said the department did not currently have a mechanism for incorporating unsolicited third-party pace data, but that the email had been "read in full" by at least one staff member.

Reception

Reaction among Friday's participants was mixed. Diane Vandehey, 61, chair of the county fair planning committee, finished the 5K in 42 minutes and said she had not noticed the radar gun until a fellow runner pointed it out near the second mile marker. "I assumed it was for the race," Vandehey said. "I did not know it was Ned's."

The accountant clocked at 6:12 did not respond to a request for comment sent through the Waukesha Running Club's group email list, where his identity remains, per England's own account, unconfirmed.

England said he plans to attend next year's event in the same position, with the same chair, and intends to expand his methodology to include a stopwatch for the one-mile fun run, which this year he was unable to time due to what he described as "a brief and unrelated matter involving my grandson's old bike helmet."

"I'll have better equipment next year," England said. "This year was really more of a baseline."