Some senior Dallas police officers are being forced to drive old cars to put enough mileage on them so that they can meet the city’s standard for replacement, reports the Dallas Morning News. It’s part of an effort by department officials to fix what was a badly mismanaged auto fleet.
“We have to be responsible with the dollars that we receive from the public,” said Assistant Chief Floyd Simpson. “Just because we’ve mismanaged it, it doesn’t mean that we need to throw all these cars as a group in the trash. Some of them needed to be thrown in the trash, and they have been.” Meanwhile, Sgt. Gary Kirkpatrick, supervisor of the special investigations unit, which handles some of the city’s most intense and high-profile crime scenes, such as police shootings, was assigned a 1995 Ford Taurus. In the last few weeks, it has been in the shop several times. “It was badly out of alignment, and the whole vehicle shook in an unsafe manner,” he said.