THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, October 7, 1994 TAG: 9410060207
SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON PAGE: 08 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY KAREN WEINTRAUB, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Short : 43 lines
Police officers won't be able to take their cars home anytime soon, if ever, the City Council decided Tuesday.
The city's management and budget department spent several months studying policies in other cities and concluded that the cost of allowing officers to take their cars home is far greater than its benefits.
Even the chief of police, Charles R. Wall, who had asked for the policy change, agreed the price tag was too high, City Manager James K. Spore told the council.
No formal vote was taken on the issue, but the council's inaction means the subject won't come up again at least until next spring during the annual budget process, Spore said.
Management and Budget Director E. Dean Block said his analysis shows that allowing 310 officers to take their patrol cars home at night would cost the city $5.6 million up front to purchase additional vehicles and about $455,000 per year to maintain them.
Recent polls have shown that 90 percent of Virginia Beach residents feel safe within their own neighborhoods, Block said. It would be hard to make people more comfortable in their neighborhoods than they already are, he said.
Block said he couldn't find evidence from other cities that allowing officers to take cars home has any impact on crime. So the officers may be the only ones to gain from being allowed to take their patrol cars home at night, he said.
Several council members questioned Block's conclusions, saying it may be hard to measure the help a neighborhood gets by having a police car parked there every night.
``The question is, does our investment make the people of Virginia Beach feel safer,'' Councilman W.W. Harrison Jr. asked, rhetorically. by CNB