Our local police department now has a pair of Corvette C6's for highway enforcement and educational purposes in addition to 2 Ford Excursions and 2 Ford F-250 Supercabs for Commercial Vehicle enforcement as a result of some grants (federal and private) to allow us to take over several stretches of highway from the County and State. They look really nice. The Corvettes are only driven by senior officers who've done special pursuit training from the State (who also operate Corvettes) so those who drive the cars have already wrecked their share of cars "having fun" and know better now.
I'll tell you one thing though, the best cruiser out there by far is the Dallas County Pro-Stock dragster. I know the Deputy who drives it, and it's always cool to watch him drive that car in parades and then take it down to the Drag Strip and beat the living daylights out of all comers with full lights and sirens.
In the UK, Police forces are becoming more and more reluctant to invest in high performance cars. Its boils down to rising costs and reduction in budgets by the government. I've seen panda cars reduce in size over the years, so much so that Vauxhall Corsa's are now common place in the North of England!
I suppose America and further afield have always been big with regards to vehicles and are usually in favour of heavy, thirsty thumping V8's. Thats down to their culture, fuel costing much less and much much bigger fundings. If UK forces had the cash, they'd have bigger and better equipment basically. :think:
I suffer from paranoid amnesia. I can't remember who I don't trust.
To add to Eddie's coments, we also don't really have the local roads for bigger cars. There are many locations where we have row after row of terraced housing, most having more than one car, and you just end up with a street full of cars parked along both sides.
Bigger vehicles are fine for motorway patrol work, but not really practical in our local neighbourhood.
The standards round here tend to be Focus hatches for the beat men, Focus estates and Mondeo's for response with V70's on armed response and the motorway.
It's not too bad, a 2 litre Mondeo TDCI is plenty quick enough for most situations encountered on a day to day basis.
The city, strangely, still has V70's on response. Can't get much speed up in the centre of town but then you can't persue in a Focus...
There are many exceptions as well, the motorway have just ordered a brand new BMW X5 to play with.
I suffer from paranoid amnesia. I can't remember who I don't trust.
