The first police car in the United States took to the roads of Akron, Ohio, in 1899. The Akron Police Department’s electric-powered patrol wagon was equipped with lights, a stretcher and gongs. Its first call was to pick up a drunken man. Two decades later in the 1920s, police departments began outfitting vehicles with two-way radios and the rest, as they say, is history.
Today’s police vehicle – whether you call it a patrol car, squad car or cruiser – prioritizes officer safety both in vehicle performance and construction, as well as the mobile technology that is turning the average “black and white” into a mobile incident command vehicle.
Next to recruiting and training staff, maintaining a police fleet is one of the biggest challenges for a law enforcement agency. This digital edition, sponsored by Getac, reviews some of the considerations for an agency purchasing vehicles for 2020 and beyond, including:
- How the array of technology in today’s police vehicles adds markedly to their utility and safety
- How SUVs have proven capable of supporting a variety of police operational functions
- The significant savings hybrid vehicles offer without sacrificing operational capability
- Vehicle-related cybersecurity issues
- Outside-the-box funding sources for new police fleets
To download your free copy of the “How to build a police fleet for 2020 & beyond” Digital Edition from Police1 fill out this form.
