Darlington Police Department receives new patrol cars
By Samantha Lyles, Staff Writer, slyles@newsandpress.net
The Darlington Police Department recently added four new vehicles to their patrol car fleet, purchasing new Ford Interceptors to replace Dodge Chargers that had reached the end of their viability.
“The thing with patrol cars is the longer you have them, the more it costs to keep them running,” says Darlington Police Chief Danny Watson, noting that preventative maintenance costs rise markedly for patrol vehicles as years pass, since these cars – like their drivers – work long hours under stressful conditions.
“Because we have a limited number of cars, some of those vehicles run twenty-four hours a day. When you run a car like that, putting at least 30,000 miles on it every year, that car has been driven hard,” says Watson.
After getting fully equipped for the road (with radar, lights, paint and striping, cameras, etc.), the new Ford Interceptors cost about $35,000 each, purchased at advantageous state contract prices. DPD saved about $20,000 by transferring four radio units from other vehicles, and saved another $10,000 by using two in-car camera systems awarded to the department as traffic enforcement incentives.
Watson says the switch from Dodge to Ford should cut down on mechanical issues, keeping the patrol cars on the road and out of the repair shop.
“This is the vehicle that Ford came up with to replace the Crown Victoria…We’re hoping that these vehicles will last longer and hold up better than our Chargers have. We’ve had an inordinate amount of problems with the Chargers. That may not be the case for everyone, but for us, it’s just been one thing after another,” Watson says. “And another benefit of Fords is that we have Raceway Ford right here in town where we can take the vehicles for warranty work so we don’t have to go to Florence or Sumter to have the vehicles fixed.”