The average driver would be happy with a car that has fewer than 100,000 miles on it.
But the average driver doesn’t engage in high-speed pursuits and drive over curbs — at least not on purpose.
That’s not the case with police patrol vehicles, which is why Tucson police officials say some of their cars are long overdue for replacement.
In the next fiscal year, the department is hoping to replace 40 cars, in what it calls an “aging fleet,” that have racked up hundreds of thousands of miles.
“What this translates into the community is (the officers’) ability to safely get to the calls, their ability to get from call to call to call and not work longer and work on overtime just to catch up,” Assistant Chief Ramon Batista, who heads the Field Services Bureau at Tucson police, said at a Citizens Police Advisory Review Board meeting this week.
The department has 840 vehicles, 454 of which have accrued more than 80,000 miles, according to Officer Kristopher Goins, a department spokesman. The model years of the cars range from 1988 to 2015. Most of the patrol cars are about 8 years old.
The average mileage accrued for Tucson police patrol cars is about 88,000 miles, he said. The highest recorded mileage is 201,000 for a marked police car and 209,000 for an unmarked car.
The industry standard is to replace vehicles when they have been driven between 60,000 and 80,000 miles.
Police cars are driven differently than passenger cars, said Roland Gutierrez, president of the Tucson Police Officers Association.
In pursuit situations, police are driving at higher speeds, he said. With higher speeds come harder braking. Sometimes officers have to drive their cars over curbs.
“When it comes to that type of driving, it puts a lot more stress on our cars than the average citizens and their cars,” Gutierrez said.
Part of officers’ duty is to check their patrol cars before starting their shifts, but officers aren’t certified mechanics, he said. Despite precautions, something unanticipated can always happen, and with older cars the risk is higher.
“If everything looks fine and sounds fine, and it breaks all of a sudden, that’s going to put our officers in a dangerous situation,” Gutierrez said.
The department is working with about a $168 million budget in the next fiscal year, Richard Prater, finance manager for Tucson police, said at the citizens board meeting. Most of that is earmarked for personnel, including paying officers and civilian employees.
The department needs about $4 million to replace older vehicles and computers, Prater said.
To replace 40 police cars, which are about $45,000 apiece, would cost the department $1.8 million, though it would have to replace 80 cars to be in a “healthy” state.
That’s only a small portion of the budget, but when faced with fiscal realities, Prater said non-emergency items, such as replacing old equipment, are often knocked off the priority list.
“We’re sort of in an emergency purchase-only mode,” he said. “Of course, we never sacrifice officer safety.”
But the cost of maintaining the aging vehicles so they are safe quickly adds up, said Assistant Chief Mark Timpf of the Administrative Services Bureau.
“We’re never going to have them unsafe on the road,” he said. “We take care of the issues, but that’s profoundly expensive.”
Tucson police could not immediately provide a figure for how much the department spent on maintaining the old vehicles.
Jeremy Christopher, president of the citizens board, said he has been on ride-alongs where he witnessed old vehicles faltering. In one police van, the kill switch had to be engaged to make sure it would stop.
“Four million dollars to get the police department up to where it needs to be seems to be something I think we should all be in favor of,” he said.
