St. Petersburg Has Seen 58 Percent Jump in “Preventable” Accidents Involving Police Vehicles in Past 5-Years
By Marcus Franklin, St. Petersburg Times (Florida)
ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. - A police officer backed his cruiser into a palm tree last November in the parking lot of the Sanderlin Family Center, denting and tearing the bumper.
A couple of weeks later, another officer damaged the back of his cruiser when he struck a decorative metal lion while making a U-turn in front of a home on Ninth Avenue S.
The next month, an officer responding to a shooting call struck another police cruiser and damaged its headlight while turning at Fourth Avenue N and Fifth Street.
None of the accidents caused serious injuries, and damage in each ran only in the hundreds of dollars. But police officials concluded that the officers could have avoided the accidents, and they even suspended for a day the officer who backed into the tree because of his involvement in another “preventable” accident within 18 months.
During the past five years, the number of preventable accidents involving St. Petersburg police vehicles leaped by 58 percent - 55 in 2000, compared with 87 in 2004, according to figures the agency provided.
Those 87 preventable accidents accounted for more than half of the 167 total accidents. The city paid out $171,000 in Police Department-related claims in 2004.
Nearly seven out of every 10 of them stemmed from auto accidents of all varieties. Such claims exceeded those for dog bites, false arrests and missing, damaged and destroyed property combined, according to city records.
The accident claims ranged from $169 to $9,566 each.
The St. Petersburg Police Department’s percentage increase in preventable accidents is the highest among the Tampa Bay area’s largest agencies.
Preventable accidents went up by 10 percent at the Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office and by 4 percent at the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office.
The Clearwater Police Department’s preventable accidents dropped by 30 percent. Clearwater spokesman Wayne Shelor said he couldn’t explain the drop, adding that a variety of factors probably contributed.
Preventable accidents at the Tampa Police Department increased by 28 percent. Officials there attributed the rise to a 25 percent increase in vehicles since 2000, said Laura McElroy, a department spokeswoman.
St. Petersburg police Chief Chuck Harmon blamed, in part, the department’s expansion of its take-home car program in recent years.
The policy, which allows officers who live in Pinellas to keep their assigned cars around the clock, began in 1998 with 30 cars. Since then, the department has added 140 more cars to the program.
The department gets more use from a cruiser assigned to one person than from one used by three different officers over three shifts, the chief said.
Also, since 2000, the department has added 40 new vehicles to its fleet, which totals 586, mostly marked cruisers. The result: more mileage.
The benefits of greater visibility of cruisers in neighborhoods resulting from the take-home program outweigh the increases in mileage and preventable accidents, Harmon said.
Officers must monitor a radio, a computer and people who appear suspicious - all while driving, sometimes in “hazardous conditions,” Harmon said.
“I’m not overly concerned about the types of accidents they’re having,” Harmon said. “But I am concerned about the numbers increasing. Anything we can do to reduce those numbers is something we’re going to do. But it needs to be put in perspective.”
In 2003, the department started suspending the take-home privilege for any employee involved in two or more preventable accidents within an 18-month period. And the department stresses to new hires that vehicle crashes “create more liability for the city than any other thing officers do,” according to the department.
Officer Troy Harper lost his take-home privilege after he forgot to remove a gas nozzle from the tank and drove off in November. The accident occurred 11 months after Harper had been involved in another preventable crash.
The officer wasn’t alone; last year, 20 department employees each had at least two crashes within 18 months.
The vast majority of the accidents are minor, such as Harper’s blunder, Harmon said.
“If you look at dollar amount per accident, we’re not having significant property damage as a result of these accidents,” he said.
Damage to cruisers and other property totaled about $302,000 in 2004, according to the department.
“Law enforcement officers are going to get into accidents,” he said. “It’s a part of the job, unfortunately.”