Tosa Police Get New Squads With a New Look

You probably won't fail to recognize Wauwatosa's new police cars cruising the streets – they'll still be painted blend-into-the-night black – but you might do a quick double-take.

Soon, six new "front-line" squad cars will be on patrol, different models than we're used to, sporting different logos. The first hit the streets Monday, and another will be added each week as all the cars are made road-ready.

But while it's the new shape and graphics that will catch your eye, it's what's different inside and under the skin that counts.

For the first time, Wauwatosa officers will be driving cars specifically outfitted in the factory for police use. While they're built on a Ford Taurus platform, they're different enough to rate their own model name: Police Interceptor.

In the past, the ordered vehicles with the available options it wanted. The Interceptor essentially incorporates the options police always do want with a few extras that nobody else will have.

"Probably the main difference is that they come set up with a lot more of the connections and ports for electronics already built in," said Sgt. Salvatore "T.J." Alioto. "Before, we would have to do a lot of fooling around with the wiring harness to accommodate all our equipment – radios, cameras, the computer, lights.

"So it's much easier to do the installations."

Car-jock options are standard

Other than that, the Interceptors for the most part are Tauruses tricked out with the burliest options you could get if you put in a special order with Ford for a tough, yet safe, car.

"Your car won't have an oil cooler and a transmission cooler," Alioto said. "These do, because these cars are on the road 24/7, and they get driven hard.

"They have 18-inch wheels with oversized brake pads, for the same reason."

Alioto said that police officers drive their cars in every way that you shouldn't – fast starts, fast stops, hard turns and, perhaps worst of all, the third-shift slows.

"At 3 a.m., they're going 15 miles an hour with the windows rolled all the way down, even in the dead of winter, looking and listening," Alioto said. "Those are much harder miles than highway miles – and we don't do many highway miles."

For policing purposes, Wauwatosa is divided into six "squads," in this case meaning not cars or officers but geographic patrol sectors. One front-line patrol is assigned to each, and all are patrolled day and night through three shifts.

Only six cars are used.

"When a car comes in at the end of a shift, it's parked for maybe 15 minutes before the next duty shift officer starts it up and goes out," Alioto said. "They go around the clock."

(That doesn't mean there is always only one police officer in your one-sixth of Wauwatosa, Alioto said. There are many other officers on all shifts out doing different duties on assignment, motorcycle patrols, marked and unmarked squads ready to respond in the sector they're in or closest to.)

Those six squad cars put on between 60,000 and 70,000 miles in a year – and then they are retired from front-line duty but not from service.

"We take out the front-line equipment and they become backups or Investigative Bureau cars," Alioto said. "We'll put another 15,000 or so miles on them in that capacity, which might take a year or two.

"Detectives don't spend a lot of time driving around. They're going from here to there and back here."

Taking some danger out of dangerous driving

Alioto's favorite feature of the Interceptors is not the sexiest one or the car-jock one that you can't or probably wouldn't get. It's one you can get on a lot of cars but wasn't available on the Crown Victorias the department had been buying.

"It's got all-wheel drive," Alioto said, "and it's really sophisticated. It senses the traction on each wheel independently and responds instantly, applying or reducing drive to keep you in control.

"We sometimes have to drive very aggressively, and particularly for cornering, this is a great thing to have. It's much safer for the officer. The system will even sense the limits and apply the brakes automatically, to the appropriate wheels, when a wheel starts to skid."

Alioto said that doesn't actually slow down response time, even in a pursuit, because we're talking about fractions of seconds of braking.

"It's not about time, it's about distance," he said. "When you can corner tighter, you're reducing distance, and you don't lose time. When you start going sideways, you're increasing distance, and you're not in control.

"And that's not safe."

Creature comfort and high visibility

Alioto said the Interceptor is a little smaller than the Crown Vic it replaces, but it has a better crash rating and is more comfortable.

"I do think they specially designed the seats with police officers in mind," he said, "because they're wider and deeper. We get a lot of chronic back problems, sitting in the seat for hours wearing that big, bulky duty belt."

One special built-in feature that tickles Alioto is the headlight strobes. Older cars have headlights wired to "wig-wag" the standard bulbs on and off, left to right.

The Interceptor has extra and extra-bright separate lights that strobe rapidly – and unmistakeably.

"They're going to be really bright," Alioto said. "You're not going to miss those."

All that – and at a low, low price you won't believe!

The cost of a police-equipped Interceptor is comparable to that of a larger, option-equipped Crown Vic.

Capt. Dale Weiss said the Interceptors cost $25,376 apiece from the factory.

Normally, since the car wears out in a year and the electronic equipment inside doesn't, everything needed in a new front-line squad is just moved over from the retiring ones.

Weiss said that because there are a few things in the departing Crown Vics that don't fit the more compact Interceptor – principally the "cage" in the back seat – the department is spending about $1,600 more per car for this changeover.

Radios, light bars, computers, cameras and every other add on that adds up to a modern police car are replaced on their own schedule, Weiss said.

Replacing all of that equipment at once, he said, would about double the cost of the fully outfitted new police car to around $50,000.

Look for the Interceptor at Tosa's Night Out

Most of the things the new cruisers have on board you should hope you will never see from the inside – unless you see them Aug. 7 at Tosa's Night Out, where a new Interceptor will be on display.

But you will see, on the road, that the cars no longer make a secret about where they patrol. The old cars say only "Police" on the side, along with the Wauwatosa city shield.

The new cars have "Wauwatosa" printed proudly and prominently above "Police," on both sides and back. But they haven't lost the shield, either.