Steve Conrad to be new Louisville chief, source says

I understand your point, but really, it would not be an effective way of making an argument for keeping the take home car program. The program exists to create an illusion of officer presence. It's effectiveness is not measured by statistics. By your logic, we should reduce the size of the department in half because the number of officers we have is disproportionate to the number of arrests made. I say free yourself from the everlasting threat and turn your car in like I did. Freedom is bliss.

Well a big chunk of it is made up of intangibles--- that is it can't really be shown on a pie chart

Simple continual presence in neighborhoods makes a community safer (its hard to put that into a percentage because if you compare to non-take home car data it is either going to be too old or a different city) The additional officer presence out and about, the commute and so on.... increases the amount of times a patrol car has been by that certain gas station... and quite simply deters and prevents crime.

You throw on top of that response times and overall officer morale and I think you have a legitimately useful program.

On the flip side, the overall cost is mostly seen in fuel and a drive across a division to drop off a car can be near the same as the trip home for many. Even if you don't like the program I really don't think the space in the budget is worth the downside of taking them away.

J-R