Anti-theft systems keep criminals in park
May 1999 - By Rebecca Kanable
Perhaps it looks like a scene from an action movie. Cpl. Gene
Strickland of the Tampa (Florida) Police Department was on
a traffic stop interviewing a truck driver when he was struck
by his own cruiser. A cocaine addict, not involved with the
traffic stop until then, had decided to jump in Strickland's
running vehicle and use it as a weapon against Strickland.
"I got knocked up onto the hood of the car and I was holding
on by the windshield wiper blades," Strickland recalls. "We
went down the road a short distance with me on the hood."
Strickland shot the driver through the windshield. The driver
was hit three times and bailed out of the car as he was being
shot, leaving Strickland on the hood of a driverless car. The
vehicle stopped, Strickland was underneath it. He had a lot of
bruisers but nothing was broken and more importantly, he was
still alive.
Strickland looked for something to help prevent this from happening
again. A couple of years ago, he heard about anti-theft systems
from Trem Products Company in Bedford, Massachusetts. He now
has an integrated (automatically activated) anti-theft system from
Trem Products Company installed in his vehicle. "I can literally
bail out of my car and chase somebody and the car can be left
running and no one can steal the car," he says.
Trem Products Company sells its anti-theft systems to law enforce-
ment under a product line called Tremco Police Products. While
the anti-theft systems, especially the automatically activated
systems, are easy to operator for officers, they are no joy ride
for criminals. A criminal looking to hop into a police vehicle and
escape quickly will find himself stuck in park because he can't
move the shifter. Upon returning to the car, an officer can
deactivate the system and be on his way in a second.
Although the systems also prevent vehicles that are not running
from being stolen, they originally were designed to keep unattended
running vehicles from being stolen. Patrol vehicles need to be left
running for various reasons whether it's to operate emergency equip-
ment without draining the battery, to keep the windows defrosted or
to keep a canine waiting in the backseat from getting overheated.
"When you're out interviewing suspects or assisting someone and
your back's to the vehicle, it's very easy for someone to just
slip in the car, throw it in drive and take off," says Thomas Larkum,
fleet manager for the Town of West Hartford (Connecticut) Police
Department. The Town of West Hartford has equipped its 27 marked
Ford Crown Victorias with integrated anti-theft systems.
Virginia State Police garage manager Wayne Cosner agrees, "If you've
never had one of your cars stolen, you're lucky." The Virginia State
Police has equipped about 1,600 marked and unmarked Crown Victorias
and Chevrolet Caprices with integrated anti-theft systems.
The Town of West Hartford has been using anti-theft systems since
1991. Virginia has been using anti-theft systems since 1992. Neither
Larkum nor Cosner say a vehicle has been stolen when an anti-theft
system was activated.
Three systems
There are three anti-theft systems available from Trem Products
Company.
The standard (manually activated) and integrated systems are
available for police package vehicles such as the Crown Victoria,
Caprice, Jeep Cherokee, Chevrolet Tahoe, Ford Explorer and Ford
Expedition. A third system, the Police Smart System, is available
for vehicles that don't come in police packages. Typically these
vehicles are used as undercover vehicles and don't need to be left
running but they need a good, foolproof anti-theft system. The
Police Smart System is smart enough to be used in just about any
vehicle - even boats. This system is automatic, but unlike the
other two systems, it does not work when the car is running. It
is activated when the vehicle is in park and turned off.
About one-third of the state agencies, as well as town, city,
county and federal agencies have included a Tremco anti-theft
in their vehicle specifications as standard equipment, says Mark
Tremblay, vice president of Trem Products Company. The most popular
of the three systems used in the United States, Canada and South
America is the integrated system because it goes on every time
the vehicle is in the parked position, Tremblay says. "In a high-
adrenaline situation, there's no time for an officer to activate
an anti-theft system before he gets out of the car. He may have
other priorities like un-holstering his weapon at that time,"
he says.
Larkum says the integrated system offers peace of mind for the
officer when he gets out of his car and leaves his vehicle
running.
The Dracut Police Department in Dracut, Massachusetts, is one
department that has seen an anti-theft system prevent a car from
being stolen. An anti-theft system from Trem Products Company
stopped a 22-year-old man who had crashed his body through the
windows of two homes and then kicked and bit two police officers.
"This person was on some type of drugs," says chief Louis Panas
of the Dracut Police Department in Dracut, Massachusetts. "It
took three people to finally control him. If he could have moved
the shifter out of park, he would have been gone.
"I think it's a good idea to have this type of safety device in
a cruiser so this type of incident doesn't occur because it can
be very costly. It's not only the cruiser being stolen, it's all
the equipment too. By the time you're through, there's a lot of
money invested in the cruiser and all of a sudden it's gone.
Anti-liability
Then there's the liability. "If that person drives down the road
with that cruiser and ends up getting into an accident and people
get hurt, it definitely brings out liability from a community,"
Panas agrees.
Cosner notes, "A police car in the wrong hands can be a pretty
dangerous thing. The liability is boundless."
Liability is the key reason law enforcement uses anti-theft
systems. "It's not really the loss of the police car or the
loss of its contents that seems to be the bigger issue today,"
says Tremblay, a former paramedic/police officer who has seen
emergency vehicles stolen. "It's the injuries or deaths resulting
from that vehicle being stolen that makes the agency liable."
The theft of a vehicle is usually an act of desperation on the part
of the criminal, he says. "It's a situation where somebody is going
to try to flee from the police at all costs. He'll do anything to
avoid being captured, including getting in a foot chase and circling
around and jumping in that only avenue of escape, which in many cases
is the running police car. If the trooper or officer left their door
open, that's an even bigger invitation."
Criminals who do escape in a police car have an unfair advantage.
They speed away in a high-performance vehicle with sirens sounding
and lights flashing and the chase is on. They can hear on the
radio what law enforcement is trying to do to stop them. Commanding
officers who may feel personally violated because one of their
cars was taken may be reluctant to call off the chase. Their embar-
rassment may make them reluctant to notify other agencies and seek
help. In perhaps a worst case scenario, an officer is left stranded
without a vehicle or communications and his nearest backup is 100
or so miles away. Or he could be run over by his own vehicle. And
what if there are firearms in the trunk or the vehicle stolen is
an unmarked SWAT van full of weapons and ammunition?
A police vehicle doesn't get stolen every day. But when it happens,
it can be a major catastrophe.
Having anti-theft systems installed not only protects vehicles
that are running, the systems also protect vehicles that are
not running. If the vehicle is not in use and the keylock is
destroyed, the shifter will not release.
When off-duty troopers bring their vehicles home, their vehicle
is home, their vehicle is at risk of theft. "It's at risk of
theft from not just the general public, but from disgruntled
family members," Tremblay says. "A son or a step-son, typically
a teen, may get mad at dad. The keys are accessible and the joy
ride is on. There's also been the occasion where the trooper and
the missus are out to dinner and they come back and learn that
the vehicle was used. Again it's liability to the agency, to the
troopers, to everybody involved."
Cosner says an anti-theft system is pretty cheap insurance. The
system is under $100.
Designed for cops
Making a product that is inexpensive to buy, easy to install and
easy to use, yet hard to break was what Tremblay set out to do
17 years ago. He bought the idea to his father, Ted, the founder
and the President of Trem Products Company, and the senior Tremblay
came up with the design.
"It's a very simple and totally reliable device," Larkum says.
"We've never had a unit go bad."
The system typically is installed in less than 15 minutes by either
a dealership or a department's garage. There's no cutting or splicing
of wires. It plugs into an existing harness, plus it into the anti-
theft system and take the other plug of the anti-theft system and
plug it where the existing harness was. Ground current is redirected
to the shifter solenoid to operator the system, so the system does
not take away battery current needed to operate radios, heaters,
air conditioners, defrosters, emergency lights and other equipment.
The standard system has a convert black box with a switch that can
be turned on or off by hand as desired. The integrated system and
the Police Smart system are turned on or off with a floor piece.
One uses the floor piece to release the shift lever out of the
park position. The other uses the floor piece to start the vehicle.
To preserve the secret of how the systems work, Trem Products Company
tries to make sure that not a lot of people are involved with the
installation of the product. Tremblay or another representative
from the company will go to a dealership or garage to demonstrate
how the system are installed.
In the event that a squad car must be operated by a civilian at a
car wash or a garage, the systems have a switch to allow the unit
to be turned off. "Nobody in the car will know that it's there
unless somebody tells them it's there," Cosner says.
Keeping the secret
Since Trem Products Company made its first anti-theft system, more
and more agencies are including anti-theft systems in their vehicle
specifications. As the popularity of the systems increases, will the
secret of how the systems work get out into the public? Then what?
Even if the secret did spread, Tremblay says most people looking to
steal a police car jump in a running vehicle and if it doesn't move
out of the parked position, they're not going anywhere. "It's a high-
adrenaline situation," he says. "There's so many buttons to push in a
police car, you'd never figure out how the system works anyway."
If a department is concerned that the secret has gotten out,
Tremblay says the location of the activation switch can be changed.
Trem Products Company has no desire to incorporate a lock and key
or access code into its systems. "It's very clear to us that if you
had something where you had to have a key to activate or punch a code
or do something time consuming, it would just make it a non-purposeful
tool."
Perhaps reluctant to try a new product, many have tried to come up
with a scenario in which an anti-theft system wouldn't be useful.
"The only scenario that has come up that I really haven't had an
answer for is a situation where the trooper got shot and a civilian
wanted to drive the trooper to the hospital," Tremblay says. "The
civilian puts the trooper in the back of the police car and the
civilian can't drive it. The civilian should be using the radio.
You don't want to take the trooper from the scene. We live in a
world with quick EMS response and helicopters. If a trooper does
get hurt and he is moved, he could be further injured. If he is
moved in the vehicle, the crime scene may be hard to relocate later
on."
Strickland won't forget the day he was injured by his own cruiser.
It's not a performance he wants to repeat.
"It's quite a comfort to me knowing that my car is going to be there
when I get back," Strickland says.
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