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OPD’s Cruiser Crisis
By
Sgt. Jeff Baker
The most vital piece of equipment a cruiser officer has is, well, a cruiser. The cruiser cop is undeniably the foundation of any police department, sheriff’s office or state patrol, and he or she relies on their patrol vehicle to do a great many things beyond mere transport to and from calls for service. A street cop’s cruiser is literally their office. It’s an important piece of equipment used in apprehending violators of the law and quickly negotiating routes to emergencies. It can and should be a symbol of professionalism and source of high morale as well.
Sadly, not so in Omaha.
To be blunt, our marked fleet stinks. Of the approximately 206 cars in the bunch, a whopping 88 of them have over 100,000 miles on the clock. Another 13 have between 90,000 and 100,000 miles logged. The quick and dirty: half of all Omaha Police Department cruisers are geriatric rattletraps. And it only stands to get worse. OPD cruisers are driven on average of 36,000-40,000 miles per year, increasing the number of cars with over 100,000 miles by about 32 next year.
I don’t profess to know where the money should come from, but it needs to come nonetheless. For the last five years, we’ve received from a low of 23 new cruisers to a “high” of just over forty. Even 1997, our best year of the last half-decade, brought with it an abysmal number of new cars, 43. In reality and in order to more quickly turn the fleet over, the City needs to purchase a quantity more like double that number. And every year in which 40 instead of 80 new cruisers are purchased, we fall that much further behind the year following. Plain, simple math.
This is clearly a safety issue that’s not being adequately addressed. High mileage police cruisers are unsafe. Usually driven 24-hours-a-day, cruisers are subjected to stop-and-go and emergency driving conditions on a regular basis. While I’m not a mechanic, I believe it’s inarguable that the chances of catastrophic failure of suspension pieces or steering components is greater in a high mileage, hard driven vehicle. And when a cruiser loses its snappy acceleration, tight cornering and sure-footed braking from its more youthful days, police officers are forced to skirt closer to the edge of their individual driving skill-sets in order to keep up with flight suspects. (It would help if we had a little ongoing emergency-driving training, but that’s another editorial for another day.)
Also, this issue speaks directly to the state of officer morale. How do City officials expect cops to put time and effort into cleaning and pressing their uniforms, polishing their work boots and leather gear, and carrying themselves with pride and dignity when the mobile office space they’re forced to endure are often filthy, banged up jalopies with 125,000 miles on the odometer and blue smoke puffing from the exhaust tips?
That brings me to my final note. Leadership by example is a powerful thing. As a patrol sergeant in the NE Precinct, I twice requested—once in writing—to have a cruiser camera installed in my command car so that I could be subjected to some of the same scrutiny our street officers are. I was turned down on both occasions, but the point here is that OPD management could do well to make some symbolic sacrifices relative to equipment and elect to drive, say, reconditioned Crown Victorias instead of often newer sedans and nicely outfitted four-wheel-drive sport utilities. Either that, or form up a posse and knock some heads over at City Hall so the dollars can be located to address this epidemic from the front end, and right the ship within two or three years.
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Note: No use or reproduction w/o express permission of author and only then with full credit given in reprint. E-mail Sgt. Baker at opdsgt@yahoo.com
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