NYPD to armor all patrol cars and command vehicles

[Skroob]

$4M will buy a lot of phone books they can then put in the door panels....what's left over will be for glass....what's the going rate of a gently used phone book nowadays?


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[Mr. Goodtimes]

I've wondered for a while how long it was going to take for PD's to start up armoring patrol vehicles. Perhaps I'm a little paranoid but I still think officers that take their cars home and park them in the driveway are nuts. Apparently some of them do too, though, as there are seven that park their cars at my fire station.


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[TGS]

I've wondered for a while how long it was going to take for PD's to start up armoring patrol vehicles.

I think there's a point of diminishing returns. Unless you go with Fully Armored Vehicles (FAVs), cops will still be killed sitting in their patrol car as the coverage will be very limited. It will almost assuredly have to be limited to door panels (maybe this is a plus with the high beltline on the Taurus?).

Armored glass is very heavy and presents a number of problems; unless it's made from the factory like BMW's factory armored vehicles, you likely can't roll down the windows. The suspension will fucking destroy itself well before any police car is used to. 300,000 miles on a cop car? Not with a heavily armored cop car that will give enough coverage to actually protect from ambush/assassinations. Think 30,000 miles if you're really nice to the car and do mostly easy highway miles. Think 10-15,000 for actual use. We have FAV Suburbans that are 6,000 miles and ready to throw in the towel....think an Impala is going to fair any better?

Door hinges and latching mechanisms break, as evidenced even by some members here with their personal experience on very lightly armored police cars featuring only the door panels. Literally everything on the vehicle becomes stressed and will fail prematurely. The glass will delaminate with prolonged exposure to the sun, which will be incredibly expensive to maintain on a fleet. We routinely have to replace glass at our armored vehicle "Depot" before they even get shipped out.

In the end, I think to armor police vehicles to prevent these sorts of incidents is shortsighted and knee-jerk. The only realistic solution for armoring cruisers and pursuit vehicles.....door panels.....would not prevent these sorts of incidents to begin with, so incidents like this shouldn't be a driving force in the decision making on whether to up-armor police cars.

IMO.

[heyscooter]

The armor basically has to be life cycled just like PPE anyone else carries. Don't forget the training needed to learn how to drive higher speeds with a high center of gravity vehicle. They become Lincoln town boats and could get someone hurt if you don't know what you're doing. It will take some additional training on vehicle dynamics to ensure people know how to drive them safely.

I was never a city cop so I have no frame of reference for a suggestion as it pertains to NYPD, but wouldn't a tactics change be the more practical approach?

[farscott]

The cynic in me says that the whole purpose of the story is the following:

1) Convince voters that politicians are doing something.

2) Hope that people actually believe that all of the NYPD patrol vehicles are armored so that fewer people decide to walk up to a patrol vehicle and unload into it.

The really cynical part of me knows that the people who released the story are not smart enough to think of 2) as they solely underestimated the cost to armor and maintain armored vehicles. It would be less expensive to have fed.gov provide MRAPs than to use up-armored cruisers. But "the optics" of NYPD patrolling in MRAPs would be horrible....

[Erick Gelhaus]

2) Hope that people actually believe that all of the NYPD patrol vehicles are armored so that fewer people decide to walk up to a patrol vehicle and unload into it.

"A" problem with that is the public then believes (or has) that all cop cars are armorered and one doesn't need to pre-empt or return fire because they are protected from incoming rounds. People really says things like that too.

[txdpd]

I was never a city cop so I have no frame of reference for a suggestion as it pertains to NYPD, but wouldn't a tactics change be the more practical approach?

NYPD operates in as close to an infinite degree threat environment as anyone is going to get. They could change some tactics, but there's no escaping the reality of the world they operate in. If there's a PD that needs armored cars it's NYPD.

[blues]

A less expensive solution might be to have a looping recording of Al Sharpton's voice playing over the loud hailer saying "Don't shoot, these nice police are giving me a ride to an event! Support your local police!"

[peterb]

Ok, serious question. What would you do with the $4 million to improve patrol officer safety in the NYPD?

[TGS]

Ok, serious question. What would you do with the $4 million to improve patrol officer safety in the NYPD?

That's a tough question, because $4m would be a good sum of money for a 1000 officer PD to do something with.

A 36,000 officer PD? $4m is so small that there's no meaningful improvement it can accomplish. That's not going to get you a notably increased amount of officers on shift, it's not going to get you a significantly different training/readiness regimen, etc. You can fill some gaps on specific programs or precincts, but it's not an amount of money that will do anything department wide.