In Jerome, Idaho, a man asked the local police take him back to Mexico. When they refused, he threw a rock through the window of a patrol car and drove away, only to run out of gas on the way back to his home country.
In Hillsboro County, Florida, a deputy left his patrol car running while investigating a traffic crash and a 17-year-old boy stole the car and took off. The vehicle was later found undamaged.
In Northlake, Texas, at another traffic stop, an officer was hit by his own patrol car after a suspect removed his handcuffs and stole the car. The suspect was later arrested and the officer is in good condition.
Second to gun retention, keeping patrol cars away from suspects is of primary concern. These are all terrible stories, but none of them resulted in serious injury or death. Unfortunately, that is not always the case.
All the incidents described above could easily have been prevented. Enter the Tremco Anti-Theft System. With 100 bucks and the 15 minutes it takes to install the device, the Tremco system allows officers to leave their cars running if they must, such as in the case of unassing the vehicle to engage in a foot pursuit.
This is not a new product. Mark Tremblay and his family have been making devices to keep law enforcement vehicles from being stolen for more than 20 years. It started when Mark, a former Boston paramedic, and his father, an electrical engineer and auto mechanic, began to notice news stories about patrol cars being stolen by suspects.
“We read one story about a cop car stolen in New Jersey that wound up killing six people. It’s the worst case scenario,” Tremblay recalled. “We thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be nifty to design an anti-theft device that went on automatically?’”
The Tremblays designed a system that required officers to flip a switch to turn on, but, they realized, officers might not always remember – or have time – to turn the switch. Then, in 1993, the automotive industry standardized a mechanism that required drivers to step on the car’s brake to shift out of park.
This was a big breakthrough for the Tremblays, as they now had an opportunity to incorporate their system into a car’s own locking system. The modern Tremco Anti-Theft System was born.
These days, the system is so ubiquitous that law enforcement vehicle manufacturers won’t design a car or truck that can’t accommodate the Tremco product. “It works with 64 different vehicle specification systems,” Tremblay says. “It really is made for every conceivable law enforcement vehicle.”
The real beauty of the Tremco system, though, is that for the initiated, it is absurdly simple to use. It works like this (be advised that this article appears only in the secure, LEOs-only area of the Police1 website and it not available to the general public):
A black control box with an on/off switch is mounted under the dash and wired directly into the shifter. A tube runs from the control box to a small rubber bladder hidden under the driver’s side floor mat. To pull the car out of park, the officer must step on the bladder at the same time they step on the brake. In the unlikely event that the device fails, they need only hit the off switch on the control box.
And that’s it.
It is absurdly simple, but anyone trying to steal a patrol car without knowing how to disengage the system could fumble around all day without figuring the mechanism out.
“It changes your thinking about your pursuit,” Tremblay says. “Now, you don’t have to worry about your car.” The device is standard across the country, so every cop who’s learned the system can operate a car with one installed.
And as far as installation goes, Tremblay says once you’ve learned how to put the devices into a car it takes about 15 minutes, and the device won’t void manufacturer warranties.
Fifteen minutes and 100 dollars. That’s a small price to pay to keep your squad car out of a bad guy’s hands.
Massachusetts-based Tremco Police Products is the world leader of specialty vehicle Anti-Theft Systems. For two decades Trem Products Anti-Theft systems have been included in the specifications for Federal, State, and local Government vehicles.
