Times are tough – police departments all over the country are being careful about expenses for vehicle fuel.
Only one of a number of fuel-conservation strategies adopted by the NYPD.
Shaila Dewan reports in The New York Times that police departments across the country are adapting to higher gasoline prices with innovation, and sometimes clear benefits. From As Gas Prices Rise, Police Turn to Foot Patrols
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As gasoline soars past the $4-a-gallon mark, police chiefs in towns and cities across the country are ordering their officers out of the car and onto their feet in a budgetary scramble.
“It’s changing the way we police,” said Chief Mike Jones of the Suwanee Police Department, who has asked his officers to walk for at least one hour of every shift. “We’re going to have to police smarter than we have in the past.”
Chief Jones budgeted about $60,000 for fuel in the fiscal year that ended last month; the department spent $94,000. This year, he budgeted $163,000 – a large line item in a budget of $3.8 million.
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Departments have switched to lower octane gasoline and installed G.P.S. receivers in patrol cars to make dispatching more efficient. State troopers have gone from cruising the highways to sitting and monitoring traffic in “stationary patrols.”
Salt Lake City is considering raising charges on city employees who are permitted to use government vehicles to drive to and from work:
The mayor’s proposed budget calls for employees using city vehicles to drive to and from work to pay 30 percent more in the 2008-09 fiscal year. Employees who live outside the city, including police officers, would pay between $2.40 and $16.80 more every two weeks under the plan, depending on distance traveled, to help offset the rising cost of fuel.
Not knowing the baseline fees, it’s hard to evaluate. Similar difficulties have been reported in Lubbock and Wolforth, Texas. Lubbock is considering reducing a fifty-vehicle order by three (6%) in order to compensate for increases in fuel prices. Wolfforth has a more difficult situation:
Rick Scott, chief of the Wolfforth Police Department, faces the same problem, but on a smaller scale.
The Wolfforth Police Department uses nine cars.
But the problem is the Wolfforth police department doesn’t have near the budget Lubbock’s Police Department has. So finding areas to cut is even harder.
“It’s a budget buster or whatever you want to call it, it is that,” said Scott. “It is so difficult to budget. I don’t know the fluctuation in gas prices. It has put us over budget for our vehicle budgets. We are just now trying to address it to minimize the cost.”
The Wolfforth police budget is figured by looking at a three-year average mileage of the vehicle, the current cost and then adding a certain percentage increase, said Scott.
“We just didn’t think they would rise this much,” he said.
Scott said if the gas prices flatten out, he will not have to take any measures.
But if they continue to rise “it needs to be addressed. What we do, I have no idea,” he said. “Do we look at something else, we might have to.”
Fuel price jump creates police budget problems, dated May 20th, 2008.
The NYPD (New York City Police Department for our out-of-town readers) has been purchasing gas caps and hybrid SUVs.