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How to handle a police car in hot pursuit.
‘Patrol Vehicle Operation, Part 2
“A Roll Call Film”
Emergency Driving’
Police training film made in cooperation with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.
NEW VERSION with improved video & sound:
Public domain film from the Prelinger Archives, slightly cropped to remove uneven edges, with the aspect ratio corrected, and mild video noise reduction applied.
The soundtrack was also processed with volume normalization, noise reduction, clipping reduction, and/or equalization (the resulting sound, though not perfect, is far less noisy than the original).
A police car is a ground vehicle used by police, to assist with their duties in patrolling and responding to incidents. Typical uses of a police car include transportation for officers to reach the scene of an incident quickly, to transport criminal suspects, or to patrol an area, while providing a high visibility deterrent to crime. Some police cars are specially adapted for certain locations (e.g. work on busy roads) or for certain operations (e.g. to transport police dogs or bomb squads).
The first police car was a wagon run by electricity fielded on the streets of Akron, Ohio, in 1899. The first operator of the police patrol wagon was Akron Police officer Louis Mueller, Sr. It could reach 16 mph (26 km/h) and travel 30 mi (48 km) before its battery needed to be recharged. The car was built by city mechanical engineer Frank Loomis. The US$2,400 vehicle was equipped with electric lights, gongs and a stretcher. The car’s first assignment was to pick up a drunken man at the junction of Main and Exchange streets.
Terms for police cars include (police) cruiser, squad car, area car and patrol car. In some places, a police car may also be informally known as a cop car, a black and white, a cherry top, a gumball machine, a jam sandwich or panda car. Depending on the configuration of the emergency lights and livery, a police car may be considered a marked or unmarked unit…
Usage
In some areas of the world, the police car has become more widely used than police officers “walking the beat”. This is because there has been a shift in the focus of policing away from high visibility with “an officer on every street corner” to more focused services, sending officers out in response to incidents, and also allowing patrols to cover a much greater area in less time. Placing officers in vehicles also allows them to carry more equipment, such as automated external defibrillators for people in cardiac arrest or road cones for traffic obstructions, and allows for more immediate transport of suspects to holding facilities. Vehicles also allow for the transport of larger numbers of personnel, such as a SWAT team.
Advocates of community policing often cite this shift into vehicles, and away from face to face contact, as a reason for breakdowns in relations with the community. As such, these organizations often ask police departments to encourage officers to spend less time in their vehicles and more time walking the streets and interacting with the community. This has led to some countries and forces, such as those in the United Kingdom, introducing more walking patrols, using either fully sworn Police Officers or Police Community Support Officers.
Functional types
There are several types of police car.
Patrol car
The car used to replace walking for the ‘beat’ police officer. Their primary function is to convey normal police officers between their duties (such as taking statements or visiting witnesses). Patrol cars are also able to respond to emergencies, and as such would most likely be fitted with visual and audible warnings. In Hong Kong, the car is actually a van…
