Page 380 - NIXBOOK

POLICE CARS

Police cars and the technology in them improved considerably during the time that I wore a badge and drove them as a
professional public safety first responder. I had a front row seat to some of the changes, and I had experience with enough of
them to write a bit here for your amusement, if you’re the kind of person who might be interested in old police cars. My first
assigned patrol car was a 4 year old small white boxy and lightweight 1989 Plymouth Gran Fury 4 door sedan, which was
completely unremarkable and originally purchased by the police chief only because it was one of the cheapest options at the
th
time. Here’s me, also with my new personally-owned 1994 5 generation Honda Civic. Both cars were equally spartan, and
neither had power windows. The Civic though at least had a cassette tape deck. The Gran Fury had an old standard bench seat
up front, as was the custom back then.

The Gran Fury required tire chains or cables whenever it snowed. It was not really a special police specific car, it was just a
regular old production line car that had a spotlight added to the A pillar post, a lightbar added to the roof, a pair of push bumpers
on the front, and a police radio wired in under the dashboard. Oh and a heavy duty partition installed behind the drivers seat
to keep the bad guys safely in the back. Like all other police cars back then, it had key-only door locks (no remotes) and the
door windows were manually and quite literally rolled up and rolled down with a hand crank on the doors. Our department had
two of those Plymouths (identical to same vintage General Motors Dodge Diplomats) and the rest of our cars back then were a
mix of some old 80’s model Ford Crown Victoria LTD’s and an odd Chevrolet Malibu, also circa 1987 or so.
We kept each cars in service for about 7 years, because back in those days they’d start to break down too often at around 75,000
miles and cost too much to repair and keep maintained. Our 7 year replacement cycle was pretty much an industry standard,
although some agencies with money replaced their patrol cars after literally only a few years, and at the opposite end of the
spectrum some cash-strapped agencies would try to make their cars last 10 or more years. When our cars got to old age and
started requiring too many expensive repairs, we’d strip off their decals and lights and siren and radio and we’d auction them
off. My old patrol car here was sold for all of $800 dollars in 1996.

In 2017 I came across a restored vintage police Gran Fury so I snapped this
pic. Yep, mine looked pretty much exactly like this one, complete with the
several round gauges that had nothing in them. Check out that in-dash
AM/FM radio!
I had the Gran Fury for a couple of years and only had two real notable
adventures with it. Wait, I had three: The first one was during a dark
evening patrol one night when I was slowly cruising through the American Legion park on the waterfront. The park was a
popular spot for kids and teens to hang out and smoke dope in the woods, so regular patrols were warranted to keep the numbers
down. At the end of the dirt road going into the park there was a turnaround area, but it was tight maneuvering because Public
Works had installed a large round brick structure to hide some garbage cans and benches and a sign. It had built-in concrete
benches jutting out from the side, but they were too close to the turnaround area and what looked like about a dozen or so cars
over the years had not been able to make the turn and had scraped one of the concrete benches, reducing it to broken concrete
with old rusted rebar sticking out. And dammit that rebar caught my right rear tire that night as I cranked the wheel hard to get
turned around there. I thought I had cleared it but my calculation was off about by about two inches, which was enough for a
very stiff piece of rebar to snag my tire and gouge a huge slash in it. And also dent the wheel’s rim a significant bit. So, instant
deflation, rendering my patrol car out of service. I looked at the damage and decided now would be a good time to get out the
spare and replace it. At some point while I was getting out the jack and the tire and setting it up I figured that since I was all
alone, if I could manage to switch the tire out successfully, then perhaps nobody else would ever need to know? So I went into
top speed and removed the old tire and put the spare on in record time, bothered only once by a couple of reserve officers who
rolled up on me and looked on with amusement when they saw how desperately fast I was moving. I assured them I had things
under control so they left. A short time later the night sergeant called me on the radio, “Sam six-oh-one to paul six-ten,” he
called. “Six ten,” I replied. “Hey, yeah, six ten, what’s your location?”