May/June 2005
Grand Theft Cop Car
Complacency can kill. Whether it’s something as mundane as not wearing a seat belt while driving or not wearing body armor during a high-risk entry, failure to take preventive measures can have disastrous results.
The same is true when it comes to securing a law-enforcement vehicle. Although news reports of police patrol vehicles being stolen are not common, it happens more often than you might imagine - and the results have deadly potential. While many police vehicle thefts simply end with the unit damaged, it’s not difficult to imagine a stolen unit driven by a fleeing felon running down civilians. And if that happens, the affected department is practically guaranteed to be named in a lawsuit. Worse, because a police car grants the driver almost instant access to high-security areas, terrorists would love to get their hands on one.
Their visibility - and the implication that they represent law enforcement - makes police vehicles attractive targets to some criminals. An unmarked SWAT unit might, for example, contain an abundance of weapons and tactical gear that would be a huge score on the streets. Others might simply see the police unit as the nearest means of escape or even a joy ride.
Unfortunately, once the thief is in a speeding police car, the odds shift in his or her favor, making it hard to recover the vehicle. “The bad guy has the tactical advantage,” says Mark Tremblay, vice president of Tremco Police Products. “While he’s in the car, he can monitor the [police] radio or scanner and know if you’re setting up a roadblock somewhere, then he can avoid it pretty easily.”
Who Steals Police Cars
According to the National Insurance Crime Bureau, a car is stolen somewhere in
the United States once every 27 seconds. Granted, this statistic is for civilian
vehicles, but the alarming fact is that law enforcement vehicles are also
vulnerable to theft. For the police, there’s an added pain to car theft: it’s
embarrassing for the affected department as well as the individual officer.
So what can an officer or department do to make sure their vehicles remain in their control?
As with civilian vehicle theft prevention, a number of steps can be taken to prevent unauthorized personnel from driving off in a black-and-white. Many departments feel that locking vehicles and not having “take-home” cars cuts the possibility of theft. True, it does, but there are more than a few instances of locked vehicles being broken into and stolen.
In Maryland, two departments lost one patrol car each on the same day. In both cases, the officers were off duty, and the vehicles were locked. Both were recovered within hours. One, an unmarked car, had been hot-wired after the thief pried the passenger door open to gain access.
However, most reports of stolen police vehicles involve suspects who manage to get into a unit that the officer has left unattended, either to take a report or chase someone.
An Ohio woman was arrested, handcuffed, and placed in the back seat of a patrol car; all four doors were locked. Nonetheless, while the arresting officer and others gathered evidence, she managed to slip her hands from behind her back, underneath her feet, and in front of her. She then crawled through the dividing window and proceeded to drive off. Officers caught her when she crashed the car a short distance later.
In Texas, a man walked up to a sheriff’s deputy sitting in a patrol car and asked for a ride. When the deputy rolled down his window to respond, the suspect managed to enter the vehicle, scuffle with the deputy, and drag him out. The suspect then drove away in the patrol car, though authorities caught him shortly afterward.
Invitations to Crime
The moral of these stories is that official cars are indeed theft targets. And
they’re not only targets; they’re soft targets.
One of the reasons it’s so easy to steal a police car is that many officers need to keep their units running almost non-stop through a shift, whether in the cars or not. Turning the engine off will quickly drain the vehicle’s battery because of the power demands created by emergency lights and communications systems.
Also, depending on local weather, it can be a necessity to keep the air-conditioner or heater running. And with the proliferation of communication systems, laptops, and other computers in patrol vehicles, turning off the engine often means you’ve got to power down those instruments, then go through the sometimes inconvenient rebooting procedure - not to mention the need to keep electronic devices within a fairly narrow temperature range.
Procedures and Precautions
Consequently, there is certainly a need to secure vehicles from unauthorized
use, whether they’re attended or not. But what can the individual officer or
department do?
Agencies are using a number of solutions to combat theft of police vehicles.
The simplest and least expensive option is establishing procedures that require officers to treat the vehicles as the average civilian would a personal car. That means the officer is required to lock it and take the key upon leaving the vehicle.
For some agencies, this simple solution is impractical, but others can live with it. “I’m old-fashioned; I turn the cruiser off and lock it,” says an Ohio officer. Of course, it’s hard to leave a vehicle running and prevent battery drain when you use this security procedure.
But a Colorado officer offered this solution to the problem. “Since we have take-homes, I just have multiple copies of my car key. I leave one in the ignition when I’m working so I can leave the car running when necessary and not have any problem locking the car. And I always hit the car lock button on the way out.”
One Arizona agency offers another variation on this concept by ordering its vehicles keyed alike. The standard procedure is for officers to call when leaving the vehicle, requesting that backup secure it, often by moving it. Obviously, having all units keyed alike makes this possible, even if the first responder leaves the key in the running car and locks the doors.
Technology to the Rescue
High-tech theft prevention devices essentially take one of two approaches to
making life hard on car thieves. They stop the theft or they help the
authorities track the vehicle once it has been stolen.
Some departments install GPS-linked tracking systems or LoJack devices to keep track of vehicles, but this rarely prevents them from being taken in the first place. These locate the vehicle after a theft. They can also be useful should an officer be unable to communicate his location (due to injury, radio malfunction, lack of time, etc.) and need assistance.
LoJack and similar technologies are great, but they fail to address the potential for an unauthorized person getting into the vehicle and driving it away, especially when the engine is left running with the doors unlocked. Stopping this problem requires a more sophisticated solution, and fortunately, several are available.
Tremco Police Products produces a Police Package Anti-theft System that works. Available for practically any police service vehicle, it plugs into the standard electrical wiring harness and then requires the installation of a few switches.
Once installed, the Tremco system activates whenever the transmission is placed into park; no other switch needs to be pressed. Whether the engine is running or not, the shift lever cannot be shifted out of park unless a hidden foot switch is pressed, sounding a small buzzer that indicates deactivation of the anti-theft system.
For those times when civilians might need to operate the vehicle (the mechanic at a local garage, a car wash attendant, etc.), the Tremco system features a hidden bypass switch that turns the entire system off so the car operates normally. The system is deactivated when turned over to a citizen, and reactivated when returned to the officer.
Tremco claims its system usually takes 15 minutes or less to install, and it can easily be done by anyone with normal tools and some mechanical aptitude. The cost is $89 per vehicle.
When considering the potential liability - not to mention the embarrassment - of stolen law-enforcement vehicles, installing an anti-theft device of some type becomes a no-brainer.
Of course, one type of patrol vehicle seems to be immune to theft: the K-9 unit. For some reason, most people think twice about trying to heist a car that has a built-in set of teeth accompanied by vicious barking. But these are a small percentage of officers. As a fleet manager, you need to take precautions and consider technology that can prevent a police unit from leaving without the assigned officer.
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