Kailua-Kona Patrol cars ADVERTISING Marked vehicles are fiscally feasible Patrol cars make cents. I coincidentally have seen both sides of the patrol car discussion. I was a fleet sales manager for a car dealer group, a reserve deputy sheriff and
Patrol cars
Marked vehicles are fiscally feasible
Patrol cars make cents.
I coincidentally have seen both sides of the patrol car discussion. I was a fleet sales manager for a car dealer group, a reserve deputy sheriff and a member of a city police commission.
A regular vehicle, (such as a Ford Crown Victoria or Ford 500), set up from the manufacturer as a police unit, can cost around $70,000. Communities with strong budgets buy or lease these vehicles through a competent car dealership with the cooperation of that car dealership’s factory fleet representative. Normally these cars then patrol for one to three years and accumulate 60,000 miles.
At that time, again with the help of a competent dealership, these cars are brokered to a community with a smaller police budget at about 30 cents on the dollar. Then the selling community replaces them with their next generation of new cruisers. The smaller budgeted police department then refurbishes these used vehicles, and again drives them for approximately another 60,000 miles. At that time these vehicles have completed their usefulness as a police car, and are then brokered again to large city cab companies and have a third life as a cab until they reach 300,000 miles or more. In some cases after that, a very few continue to run as cabs in central and south America.
If a community takes the time to solicit the assistance of a factory fleet representative, they can be shown how marked patrol cars are fiscally feasible. And if a community takes the time to search, there are dozens of federal grants available for police equipment and police vehicles.
Much of crime control is done through “police presence.” Nothing besides a uniformed police officer has more presence than a “uniformed” police car.
Frank Critelli
Kailua-Kona
