Show me the (radio) money!

At the PD last week, we completed a list of the equipment (and its associated costs) added onto, or mounted inside of, each new Ford black and white Crown Victoria to make it into a “police car.”

Chief Ellen Hanson was engaged in, to put it politely, “fund allocation discussions” with other city department heads. While our small town is fortunate to have an established budget for programmed replacement of vehicles, it seems that other department heads consider a variety of apparently unrelated equipment to be part of the “base” vehicle when it comes time to purchase.

Our equipment list was a comparison tool, prepared to show that cars and equipment are really two different things. I was surprised by the list. First, the total price of all these “add on” items was just about equal to the cost of the car. Second, the price of the actual police radio was low compared to the overall equipment package. To illustrate, I’ve listed the items, and their actual cost, for equipment we install in each patrol car. (See sidebar on the right.)

For our department, the equipment complement 25 years ago was much different. Each car had a $150 Federal model 11 Visibar light bar, a $125 Dominator electronic siren that “burped” in the summer when the sweep oscillator capacitors got hot, and a $1,750 Motorola Micor radio. Besides the noise and lights (plus a little first aid-kit in the trunk), the radio was the main determinant for a police car. But as they say, “those days are gone.”

Our contemporary car setup still relies on conventional voice dispatch, and the two-way radio is still the officer’s communications link to the world. But the job of a modern officer is so much more demanding and complex that the ancillary equipment related to these additional tasks is staggering — both for the installers and for the accounting department. Fortunately, the life cycle for each “add on” item is fairly lengthy, so we don’t replace everything with each vehicle change cycle.

Curiously, the radio equipment accounts for only about 3% of the total “add on” items to outfit a patrol car. Technology has continued to drive down equipment prices, and the improved design and manufacturing techniques have extended reliable life cycles for electronic equipment. We figure that about 90% of our add-on vehicular equipment “problems” are related to the original installation (or complications thereto), and the actual failure of electronic circuitry, even in the harsh automotive environment, is relatively rare. Mobile video systems, while built quite well, still require constant attention, principally because of their opto-electro-mechanical makeup.

Like me, many readers are primarily focused on public safety radio communications, and it’s easy to forget about the other 97% of the cost of police vehicle equipment. We owe it to our organizations to keep an eye open to the “big picture” of fleet costs.

Dunford, MRT’s public safety consultant, is technical services consultant for the Lenexa, KS, Police Department. He is a member of the Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials — International. You can email Dunford at [email protected].