Line-of-duty fleet We see the blue lights flashing and sirens blaring, but how is that police car purchased, equipped, maintained, and decommissioned? Chris Brown, former police fleet manager, tells LAPV about the key challenges he faced keeping a fleet of 1,000 police vehicles on the road.
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Police fleet management brings its own specific challenges,as police vehicles have to deal with execptional levels of risk. Image: Shutterstock
s a police officer, I never had to worry about where my vehicle came from or how it was maintained. New cars turned up, broken ones got fixed, and we knew the technicians at the workshops to get things done when we needed them. But that changed when I was a superintendent in charge of a large roads policing unit and a retirement meant that my force would be left without a fleet manager. I was asked if I would do the job while collaboration opportunities were explored. I had been involved in fleet matters for a while, looking at a couple of fleet reviews, and I was in charge of a department where the right vehicles were essential to service delivery, so it was an area that interested me. Modern policing is heavily reliant on vehicles and the role was described to me by a colleague as a triangle of officer, transport, and equipment – take one of those away and the service can’t be delivered. With a 1,000-strong vehicle fleet and several hundred bicycles to contend with during a period of significant change in policing, how could I refuse the challenge? The transport department team I inherited was made up of experienced and dedicated individuals, so that part of my new job was easy. Accustomed to a variety of police computer applications, I was also impressed with the vehicle management system, which allowed me to pull out meaningful data to manage the business processes. I was also able to use my police experience and translate that
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into tasking and the coordination of the department. At a local level, police use the National Intelligence Model to identify crime hotspots and series, and then deploy resources to tackle the problems. I used this format to support performance management of vehicle supply, maintenance, issues, and disposals in regular meetings to maintain a 95% vehicle availability target. Even so, in my new role there were a number of major challenges, and some of the key lessons I learned include:
Operational command vs fleet conflict Policing has always undergone shifts in style over time, as society and technology bring changes that have to be taken into account. Since the financial crisis of a few years ago, change has come at a significant pace. This impacts on the way policing is delivered and also the police fleet. For example, a decision was made as part of a local organisational change to increase the number of response-trained officers, so a significant portion of the fleet became obsolete and needed to be replaced with suitable response cars (for police, cars are assessed for suitability based on a variety of factors, but key is power outputs for low, intermediate, and high-performance cars). A knock-on effect was that the driver training team also needed more suitable vehicles to deliver the upgrade. With pressure on budgets, I went to a purely mileage-based