Pimp my Po-Po

There’s been an awful lot of hullabaloo recently concerning IUPD’s decision to upgrade its fleet from the traditional Ford Crown Victorias to sporty, needlessly aggressive-looking, pathetically overhyped Dodge Chargers. Many people argue that it’s a waste of money and that the police department should be spending its tuition-based funding on other, more important additions to the squad.\nThey’re missing the point. Generally speaking, the lifespan of a cop car is about 3 to 5 years, and even that’s pushing the limit. Consider that these cars usually run 24 hours straight with little or no downtime, that they’re pushed to their limit on a near-daily basis and that Crown Vics are only truly “undercover” in a retirement village. \nGranted, the new Chargers are kind of silly-looking, and their ability to run on E85 Ethanol fuel is limited by their inability to locate an E85 filling station in Bloomington city limits. However, if you take it as a given that IUPD needs new cars and understand that Chargers or Chevy Impalas are the only available options (the law states you must buy American whenever possible) then your rage should begin to settle. By the way, the police department went with the Chargers and not the Impalas because of space. Apparently, enough people get arrested often enough that they need to be able to fit three adults comfortably into the backseats.\nObviously, we can’t have the entire IUPD force on bicycles (as most of the brass is too out of shape to ride for long distances) and horses are not only expensive to buy and keep but leave their droppings all over the ground. Moreover, if we buy cars used by another police force that have already been beaten up and destroyed, we’ll just have to replace them again next year, thus wasting more money than buying new cars now.\nSpending money on an organization that is, in many ways, “The Anti-Fun” may seem like a horrible idea, but it’s the way the world works – so get used to it.