"Ghetto" squads/Horror stories

[Call911]

Thought it would be fun to reminisce on your horror stories about when you got stuck with the "backup" squad.

I myself get to use a '99 vic with only wigs and one working corner strobe. This also includes some white spray paint covering the rust on the wheel wells, a cage from 1993, completely loose back end, gas leak, and no windshield wipers. Also have some pretty loud clunking sounds when making sharp turns (don't know and don't want to know).

Anyone else get the sh*tty vehicle for a night?

Also, I am not a LEO. I am a CSO/Auxilary Officer (uncertified) so no whacker jokes!

[dontknowwhy]

Shoot, that sounds like some of our on-line cars. Since I'm in the traffic unit, I drive an 09 Impala with 109k miles. It has a dislodged headlight reflector (or whatever the part that covers the front of the bulb is called), no camera, the a/c will cut out while sitting still and also while driving if it's over 90 outside, the steering wheel is about rubbed down to the metal, the rear RADAR antenna only works 25-30% of the time, the transmission is starting to slip, and the ignition will lock up so you have to adjust the steering wheel all the way down then let it pop up while turning the key to get it to turn. We just replaced the seat since it had a HUGE cut in the lumbar area that made you lean right. Also had to write up the ABS system going out and the brakes nearly locking as soon as you touched the brake peddle for almost a week before they sent it to be fixed. Sad thing is, it's one of the nicer cars we have.

We also have an 07 with almost 140k that won't be replaced for at least 11 months (thankfully they replaced the motor last year and did some major work to it this year so it's not that bad to drive, though fixing it cost as much as a new car) and an 07 with 130k that is so messed up and unsafe we aren't allowed to even move it from it's spot, though it's still counted against our fleet limit (it should be replaced in about a month). We will either get a new car for patrol or the chief will take it and give us his 08 Charger. We have a 2010 and a 2011 Charger, but the SGT and CPL always take those and will trash them before sending them down for the rest of us to use.

My old department had some really crappy spare cars, but most of the on-line ones were in good shape since they were take homes. There were a few that weren't well maintained, but that's because they were drove by crap officers.

[jfloirendo]

and this thread will make me even more thankful for having a take home.

[mac266]

Dude, we've had 10 straight years of budget cuts. The brass, when given a smaller budget each year, has wisely chosen to slash equipment rather than pay / benefits / personnel. Yes, it sucks, but at least I'm taking home the same amount every month (although I haven't had a cost of living adjustment in 7 years!).

What do you think my cruiser looks like? Well, it's better than the one I had last year (different shift, different car). Last year I had more grey primer showing than paint; it looked like an urban camo patrol car.

[reils49]

I hit a deer the other night with my assigned vehicle, so now I'm mooching cars off the other shift. One of the guys was on vacation so took his Tahoe with 130,000+ on it. What a $*** box. It's been wrecked a few times, so it handles like crap. The front passenger quarter panel is almost gone, someone hit a guy wire with it. It's missing the air dam under the front bumper, so when you get it up to 100 you can feel it. No rear radar, the front radar is pretty much hit or miss, and the remote control sucks so bad I wanted to throw it out the window. The rear seat is covered in white paint, remnants of a wild domestic with one of our local crackheads. Good times...

[ChiTownDet]

Thought it would be fun to reminisce on your horror stories about when you got stuck with the "backup" squad.

I myself get to use a '99 vic with only wigs and one working corner strobe. This also includes some white spray paint covering the rust on the wheel wells, a cage from 1993, completely loose back end, gas leak, and no windshield wipers. Also have some pretty loud clunking sounds when making sharp turns (don't know and don't want to know).

Anyone else get the sh*tty vehicle for a night?

Also, I am not a LEO. I am a CSO/Auxilary Officer (uncertified) so no whacker jokes!

I got the 2000 version, sans cage. That clumking is the ball joints. Mine broke and the whole front end drops down over the wheels like a lowrider. And when I went to call MMD, my 3 hr radio battery was dead, and was in a cellphone dead spot. Luckily, I flagged 8xx, who got me a hook and a ride.

[5031OKC]

The crappiest vehicle I had was back in 2001 I was assigned to a 1993 Chevy Caprice. It wasn't that it was a huge POS. Its just that the problems it did have were significant. The gas gauge didn't always work (which left me stranded a couple of times). The driver's window leaked, so I had to keep a towel with me and hold it up to the window if I took it through the car wash. By far the most irritating problem though was the transmission. No matter how many times I put it down they would "fix" it but the problem would persist. Once you got to around 90 mph the tranny would slip no matter how much or how little throttle you applied. It would also slip if you tried to give it anything more than 75% throttle. As a result, I kicked up several pursuits only to watch them drive away into the night while I screamed and yelled and banged on the steering wheel. Luckily I only had it for about a year.

[300Busa]

wow..our pool car only sucks because it doesn't have any LED lights. For some reason the mechanic decides to take my charger down for maintenance when I am working, not on my days off.

[L-1]

Creativity

When I was a sergeant back in the 1980s. we had a beast of a patrol car no one wanted to drive. There wasn't anything particularly wrong with it other than the steering was so horrible that it drove worse than a tank. It was just a design flaw in that particular model and there was nothing our auto techs could do to make things better. Our cars were recycled when they reached a certain mileage and over all three shifts they usually put on about 100 miles per day. However, this car had no hope of replacement because no one drove it and it just sat there getting no miles.

One day, one of my officers came to me and said, "Look Sarge, I'll put some mileage on that car if you give it to me for a couple of hours, a couple times a week, and don't assign me any calls while I have it. After those two hours I'll come back in, switch back to a regular car, go out in the field and handle calls again. Knowing not to look a gift horse in the mouth, I took him up on his offer and didn't ask any questions, but I did check the mileage on the beast. Every time be brought it back from one of his little two hour trips, the odometer had gone up by a few thousand miles and pages had gone missing from the car's mileage book making it impossible to see who had checked it out for the past few days. In just a couple of months, a parked patrol car that had less than 60,000 miles on it mysteriously went all the way up to 100.000 miles. Our auto techs who did service on the vehicle couldn't understand how the oil and filters were staying so clean or why there seemed to be no wear and tear on the brakes.

I later discovered that each time my officer took the beast out, he drove it to the top deck of a closed parking garage, climbed under the dash, removed the odometer, rolled it forward a few thousand miles and then put it back.

[ddurkof]

An lates 1970s or early 1980s Ford Fairmont was pretty bad. Very small, looked like a clown car with two of us in it. They were never meant to be patrol cars and didn't make it that long on patrol.

The Ford LTD II in the 1970s right after they came out with the electronic ignition modules. They would over heat and you would stop, right there, no power. Sometimes you could beat it with a rubber hammer and it would kick back to life. Other times it was just a matter of waiting for it to cool down. As I recall trying to cool it down with water did not work.

[Speedbird543]

The first car I had was the worst of them all. I got it '05, a 1996 Lumina. As if having a Lumina wasnt bad enough it had an anemic 3.4L V-6, 160,000 miles on the clock and no AC. The car was ugly, slow, hot, smelled like crap and screamed "HERE COMES THE ROOKIE" when you rolled up on a call. Despite all of my efforts to kill it, the car would not die for an entire year.

[ChiTownDet]

L-1, had to be an late 70's, early 80's Dodge or Plymouth , Right? The ones with their patented "Float-o-matic steering.

ddurkoff, I second your sentiments on the Fairmonts. The ones we had , I believe were 4 cylinders. You'd have your heart in your throat pulling out into 60mph traffic and hearing those hamsters under the hood trying to get that car up to speed. The early 80's Fords had that thing with the module that was just like turning off the key while going to an in progress call. Then sit in the ghetto, dead in the water for 2 hrs waiting for repair "R" service to come.

The Luminas and Intrepids were a couple of other failed Police car experiments.

I thought the Caprices were the best all around squad cars in the 80's and early 90's. Beat the Dodges and Fords , hands down.

[jhkcop]

Our cars run three shifts a day, 7 days a week, etc, so they take a beating. I'm not sure I have any stories as bad as the ones above, but I've driven a "replacement" car (when the regular car is down for maintenance or has been wrecked) or two that have almost 200k miles on them.

Last year, we had an incident where a bad guy shot at an officer during a foot pursuit. He then holed up in an appliance store on one of the main streets here with the gun. A local news chopper was hovering above covering the story and one of the "facts" they reported was that it looked like several of our vehicles had been hit with gunfire. Not true. That was just the paint peeling off the hoods of the vehicles revealing the grey metal underneath.

The bad guy ended up shooting at and hitting an officer in the hand before several officers sent him to meet his maker.