Outfitting a police car doesn’t come cheap.
Peachtree City will spend $205,000 to outfit its nine new patrol cars with the necessary accoutrements ranging from the emergency lights to customized consoles and laptop mounts.
Of that amount, the city has awarded the low bid for aftermarket accessories to Trans Comm Services for $13,932 per vehicle and a grand total of $125,388. Trans Comm’s bid was the lowest bid by about $2,500, with the next-highest bid being more than $12,000 higher.
That figure does not include the purchase of the digital video cameras, Motorola radios or graphics for each car, which will be purchased separately at a cost of $80,125 and shipped to Trans Comm for installation.
Including all the equipment, the city will pay about $445,000 for the nine new vehicles, a cost of under $49,400 each.
The fleet purchase for Peachtree City represents the end of a law enforcement era being experienced across the nation with the discontinuance of Ford’s Crown Victoria model.
As such, the police department began researching its options and determined that the Chevy Caprice police vehicles would best meet its needs for the coming future.
To shave a bit off the price of the new patrol cars, the city is trading in some 17 Crown Victoria models, most of which have hit the 100,000 mile mark that is generally seen as the end of a patrol car’s useful life for pursuit work. While there were questions about extending that threshold a bit to save the city money, Police Chief H.C. “Skip” Clark noted that patrol vehicles idle for much longer periods of time than a civilian car, which causes a lot more wear and tear on the patrol cars.
The vehicle purchases give the police department a total of 89 vehicles with approximately 50 being used in the patrol fleet for emergency response, officials have said.
Others are used as reserve units for when a car is being repaired, and also for the auxiliary and reserve officers in addition to code enforcement.
