Guest View- John Musolf: "Questioning Oro Valley Police Department Take Home Cars"

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[This question and answer is from Oro Valley Police Chief Sharp's "Know Your Police Budget"]

Q. Why does the Police Department have take-home vehicles?
A. The Chief of Police authorizes the use of take-home vehicles for the following reasons:
• Members are subject to on call responsibilities
• Reduce response times to critical incidents with the appropriate equipment
• Geographical location of members’ duty stations
• Operational necessity based on assignment
Through careful management, oversight and study, the Police Department has recognized that take-home vehicles and associated equipment last longer and cost less to maintain. It is important to note that not all Police Department members have take-home vehicles.

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The scenarios that the Oro Valley Police Chief Sharp mentions are all theoretical and argumentative:

• Are all members that take home cars subject to 24/7 on call and must contact headquarters before going anywhere personally because we can’t predict when and where an incident might occur?

• Reduction of response time presumes that the incident will occur in the area where a police officer has a take home car! Is it possible that a police officer on duty in Oro Valley might be closer to the random incident?

• By stating that the take home cars are geographically stationed near the officer’s duty station implies that the officer goes directly from home to his/her duty station and back home at night. Don’t their operational and geographical assignments ever change? Don’t any of these officers ever have to go to headquarters? How are they supervised?

• Do all the School Resource Officers with a take home car live adjacent or close to their school operational assignment? Wonder if they ever go to headquarters? How are they supervised?

• It is possible that the cost of maintenance may be less on a take home car than a motor pool car that has higher usage.

• All police cars (whether centralized motor pool or take home cars) are replaced on a scheduled basis (not on amount of usage). It is called depreciation of an asset and that equipment is scheduled for replacement on a set basis (example 5 years) not the mileage usage. This means less acquisition of cars in a motor pool operation (where a police car is used for multiple shifts) This type of action reduces car acquisition expenditures at $35,000 in a motor pool operation. A Take Home Car Policy increases the total amount of cost to the Town to make sure many officers have the perk of a take home car.

• You notice that Chief Sharp never mentions the one thing that police chiefs bring up when discussing justification for take home cars: If a take home car is situated in the driveway of a police officer it might cause a criminal to think twice before doing any criminal activity in that neighborhood! However, many of the take home cars are not in Oro Valley neighborhoods since many of the police officers live outside of Oro Valley.

John Musolf
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