City's Take-Home Patrol Car Policy Will Roll On

The city's policy to allow officers to drive home patrol cars has had the beneficial impacts predicted when it was put in place a year ago, Brooksville Police Chief George Turner told the City Council earlier this week.

With Turner's recommendation, the council reached a unanimous consensus Monday night to continue the program approved in January 2008.

Since then, the policy has resulted in more patrol hours, quicker response times and a savings in repair costs, Turner reported in a written memo to the council.

Officers get on the road an average of 40 minutes sooner when they don't have to come to the office to pick up their patrol cars, Turner said, citing a study by the Tacoma (Wash.) Police Department.

Using that figure, Turner estimates that the Brooksville department has increased patrol times by a little more than five hours per day, resulting in 1,947 additional "active patrol hours" in the last year.

That is "very beneficial" to city residents because those on-duty officers responded in a primary or back-up role to hundreds of calls that would have otherwise been assigned to overtime units or seen delayed responses because of shift changes, Turner said.

The cars are also staying in better shape, the chief said.

With officers assigned to one car, they are showing "increased pride in ownership, which equates to cleaner and well-maintained vehicles."

The department is on track to meet its maintenance budget of $15,000 for the 2008-09 fiscal year, Turner said. That's down from about $19,700 in 2006, he said.

"It's definitely a cost savings," he said.

The department has seen 100 percent compliance to a policy that requires regular inspection of a car's condition and equipment, Turner said.

He also maintains the take-home car is a perk that has helped attract top-notch candidates to the department in the last 12 months.

Fuel consumption has not changed significantly and the total miles put on patrol cars decreased slightly in 2008 compared to 2007, he said.

Officers who live within Hernando County are eligible for the program. They are allowed to drive the car to and from work only, though some quick errands on the way are permitted.

Twenty of the department's fulltime sworn officers are taking home cars, including Turner and a lieutenant who already had the perk.

Agencies ranging in size from the Dade City Police Department to the Miami-Dade Police Department have take-home vehicle programs.

"I think it's a great policy and I think it's working out really well for the chief as a morale booster and recruiting tool," Mayor Joe Bernardini said.

Union, Liberty Street access will remain restricted

The city council agreed to keep in place barricades erected on Union and Liberty Streets a decade ago to cut down on criminal activity at the Hillside Estates, Tanglewood and Brooks Villas apartment complexes.

In fact, the council voted to close those access points completely, creating more aesthetically pleasing landscaping buffers to hide beefed up versions of the existing barricades that have been the frequent target of vandals.

The city erected barricades on Union Street and Liberty Street back in 1999 to make drive-by shootings and drug sales - and the inevitable flights from police - more difficult in those two complexes. In 1998, a small child in Hillside Estates was struck by a speeding car driven by a drug dealer. Brooks Villas has since been shuttered.

The barricades are working, Turner told the council. He estimated the blocked streets have cut the number of calls to the area by as much as 90 percent and wrote in a memo that he has "grave concerns" about the prospect of removing the barricades.

Tommy Brooks, executive director of the Brooksville Housing Authority, which runs Hillside Estates, wrote a letter to the city asking that the barriers remain in place.

Some motorists are managing to skirt around the barricades and, as a result, "drug distribution and vehicle traffic have picked up," Brooks wrote.

The fears of area residents that the blocked roads delay emergency responders are unfounded, Fire Chief Tim Mossgrove wrote in a memo to the city manager.

The fire department uses the main entrance to Hillside Estates on Liberty Street and has not had a problem with delays, Mossgrove wrote.