[RP TownTalk] Police take home cars

Wed Jul 2 17:09:04 UTC 2008

Friends and neighbors,

I was asked by Jenna Edwards to provide the general home locations of police
officers that are provided with take home vehicles.  Attached you will find
a short spreadsheet with the localities where such officers live.  In short,
we have one command officer and two patrol officers that live outside the 30
air miles that allow for direct work to home travel.  Outside the 30 mile
limit, patrol officers are required to find a public safety facility (police
station, fire house, etc) to park their vehicles and drive a personal
vehicle the remaining distance home.

Having provided this raw information, I would like to review some of the
often overlooked reasons why we use the model of police management that
includes take home vehicles.  I am only going to address the issue as it
regards patrol officers which are 15 in number.  The 3 command officers
are on 24/7 call and their car assignments could only be called into
question if the patrol officers situation changed.

To start, our primary goal is to have the best trained, seasoned, and
knowledgeable officers engaged in active patrol or responding to calls for
service. Every dime we spend on the police is to achieve this goal.  Using
the take-home/one car-one officer model (THM) of vehicle allocation gives us
a substantial increase in the time an officer is available for service.  THM
officers arrive at work ready to begin work immediately and, in fact, often
have no need to report to the police station.  Departments that ask officers
to change vehicles as they report require a minimum average of 15 minutes at
the beginning and ending of a shift to execute the change.

A very conservative estimate of how much time we gain in officers on the
street is 1100 staff hours per year (.5 hrs per shift x 3 shifts per week x
49 work weeks x 15 officers) our current average total cost of salary,
insurance, and benefits for an officer is $34 per hour.  Thus we get
productive policing valued at $37,000 per year that we would not otherwise
get. One might compare this to the total gas and oil budget for the police
department of $90,000.

We also estimate that an average officer's round trip to work requires about
2.5 gallons of gas at $4.3 dollars per gallon (the town pays substantially
less than this now--$3.70 at last purchase--but I'm being conservative in
this estimation) meaning the fuel cost of the THM is $23,700. Officers
currently pay $15 per pay period, totaling $5850 per year.  So the net fuel
cost is $18,900, or about half what we gain in time on the job.

There is also the question of wear and tear from the increased mileage on
the vehicles.  This is more difficult to quantify, but officers know when
they receive a vehicle that this is their car, this is where they are going
to spend a huge amount of time. All the information I can gather suggests
that officers take good care of their vehicles.  Vehicles that are traded
between officers in a non THM force tend to have a lower resale value, and
or higher maintenance costs.  Again making a conservative estimate, we
assume that there is no clear advantage or disadvantage based on this
factor.

That is where we are now.

Based on desires expressed during the budget cycle I worked with Police
Chief Chambers to make recommendations to change the way officers supplement
our fuel costs.  I am going to recommend that officers that live within 3
air miles of town be excused from paying any fee at all. There are two such
officers now.  All other officers fees will increase to $22.50 per pay
period.  This will increase the total officer contribution to $7600.

Based on the Town Talk discussion up to this point I am impressed by the
idea of looking into incentives to encourage officers to live in or very
close to our town.  After town staff is able to investigate and report on
models and programs currently available the council may choose to enact such
incentive programs.

However, I know that many police officers do not want to live too close to
where they work for a variety of reasons.  Some officers simply want to be
away from their very stressful job when not on duty--officers who live in
their jurisdictions are never really off duty.

Further, officers work to interdict criminal activities, and this makes them
prone to be the brunt of retaliatory actions.  Many officers want to put
some distance between their spouses and children and the locations where
they confront criminals.

Not to get too personal, but as the official responsible under the Town
Charter with seeing that the law is enforced in the town I can understand
why some very good officers might not want to live real close by.

I hope this information is helpful and best wishes to all,

Vern

-- 
Vernon Archer, Mayor
Town of Riverdale Park, Maryland
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