Today's threat to Civilization As We Know It comes to us courtesy of idling police vehicles. While this is a good issue to note, I guess and the editorial does acknowledge important things like radios and computers and K9 units all being ready to go at a moment's notice, it gets to be a little much when, out of all the things the Editorial Board could have weighed in on, they weigh in on this.
Let's consider, for a moment, the disproportionate number of students on campus from Illinois. Let us consider further, dear friends, how many of them drive around obscenely large cars in the Escalade-Lexus-Small Suburban Tank type of category. Yes, these are the students of the University of Iowa, some of whom undoubtedly are writing this editorial. There's the faint stench of hypocrisy in the air.
But, some things to throw into the mix- and I'll speak from my experience at UIPD. I know right now, as I'm writing this, I've got two officers on foot. They could be in golf carts or Polarises or even cars. But they're on foot. Saving the Earth and being visible on campus all at the same time. Once the weather gets warmer, we'll be sending out at least one bike unit per shift- also being pretty green. (Iowa City has bike units as well...) So the situation isn't as dire as the DI would have us believe. Sure, somedays people get a bike or foot patrol because there are no cars available- but more often than not, when the weather is good, it's increasingly common to get officers on bikes or foot, just because...
The DI, in it's wisdom, proposes implementing a power saving system that would allow the cruisers to run all equipment without the engine. Immediately, the cost drew comments:
Based on published quotes for other departments, it looks like the units are about $6k up front and some sort of annual cost at some point in the future (initial quotes have free software maintenance). With a 315 vehicle fleet, that is a fairly affordable $1.9M up front. But if the savings is only $100k per year, that is going to be easily 15 years to recover that cost, which is beyond the life of police vehicles. The units probably can be moved to a new vehicle for an installation cost, so the real question is the life of the mobile power units.So, in other words, it might not save that much money to begin with- plus, the process of integrating a computer and a car is tricky enough as it is... I would bet heavily on there being bugs in the system.
Basically though, I shouldn't be surprised about this kind of thing at all. It's Iowa City, bay-bee... where people bitch about the cops as much as possible- until they actually need them. Then of course, they didn't get there fast enough. All part of the loving, productive relationship between the local citizenry and their various Police Department's. I'm glad the DI is doing their part!
(Plus: if I need a police car, I want them to come right now. I don't want them dicking around with their equipment for 20 minutes waiting for it turn on...)
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