Fleet Services Division
Fleet Services Division
The Town of Hadley Police Department responds to between 12,000-14,000 emergency and non-emergency calls annually for the approximately 5200 residents and the tens of thousands of commuters, as well as employees and students of the Five College Area and the staff and customers of the hundreds of businesses that support it. Hadley is comprised of 24.75 square miles of land and water and 75 miles of roadway.
The Fleet Services Division (FSD) of the Hadley Police Department is responsible for the acquisition, outfitting, and maintenance of the police department vehicle fleet, as well as the coordination of repairs with town departments and outside vendors.
The capabilities to respond adequately to the needs of the residents, businesses, and visitors to the Town of Hadley are determined by the capabilities of the vehicle fleet. The goals of the FSD are;
- Maintain a safe and effective fleet
- Ensure the maintenance needs of each and every vehicle are met and documented
- Maintain a fleet of appropriate size
- Maximizing the capabilities and service life of each vehicle
FSD Officers are comprised of an experienced supervisor and officer who are knowledgeable of all of the aspects of fleet management, including but not limited to; basic automotive repair, both factory and aftermarket automotive and police software and equipment systems, and the Mass. State Bidding Process. FSD officers must also coordinate fleet assignments and maintenance scheduling.
Safe and Effective
The FSD’s primary goal is to ensure that the fleet vehicles are safe to operate and are capable of responding to calls for service both adequately and with the equipment deemed necessary by the department. This is done through routine maintenance, maintaining a standard inspection procedure for officers and supervisors, and constant assessments of each and every vehicle and the equipment contained therein.
Maintenance Program
FSD is responsible for coordinating with outside departments and vendors to ensure that the maintenance needs of each vehicle are met. This is done through automatic service intervals which ensures that routine services, such as oil changes, are completed on an increased interval due to the extreme conditions police vehicles encounter. The FSD also receives recall notifications and coordinates with area Ford vendors to expedite repairs as needed, as well as ensures that periodic inspections are completed as required.
Fleet Size
An under-sized fleet hinders the ability of the department to respond to the needs of the community and increases wear and tear fleet-wide. An over-sized fleet is financially irresponsible as it carries with it excess insurance and maintenance costs. The FSD is tasked with maintaining a fleet that is adequate for our needs. Fleet size is determined by staffing levels as well as other outside demands such as volume of construction projects within the town that require police for safety or traffic direction.
Prior to expanding our fleet size and utilizing our retired patrol vehicles for police details, our oldest patrol vehicle was often beyond repair before it’s life expectancy of five-years had elapsed. This would put the mileage from that vehicle on to other cruisers. Under our current fleet management practices, our patrol vehicles go on to serve as detail vehicles for several years.
Maximizing Service Life
Maximizing service life is done in part through maintenance and keeping a fleet of adequate size, but also by monitoring mileage and rotating cruiser assignments to various officers. Due to supervisors and officers having various administrative assignments, the FSD will adjust cruiser assignments to balance mileage over the course of years of its service; for example, higher and lower mileage vehicles will be shifted to and from officers with more administrative duties to balance mileage.
Other cornerstones of attaining a maximum service life is through the designation of cruisers for construction details, as well as instituting cruiser scheduling, similar to officer scheduling. Idle time while running emergency lights on construction details causes significant wear and tear on components. Detail cruisers are the oldest cruisers in the fleet that are no longer suitable for emergency response. By putting idle hours on these vehicles, it saves on wear and tear on cruisers assigned to patrol.
Maintaining a schedule of cruiser use also distributes the amount of time and mileage they are driven over several vehicles. The more time and miles a car is driven, the quicker it will meet its end of life requiring cruisers to be replaced more often. Most often, no more then two officers are assigned a cruiser on a regular basis.
Inventory
The Fleet Services Division is responsible for the nearly 20 vehicles maintained by the agency. Those vehicles include cruisers, trailers, and an 18 foot RIB craft boat. The fleet of vehicles are comprised of the Patrol Division, Administrative Division and Utility Division.
The Patrol Division vehicles are easily identifiable marked cruisers that are assigned to our officers for patrol responsibilities and are equipped to allow officers to respond to medical emergencies, motor vehicle crashes, traffic complaints, and are well equipped to allow officers to respond to high priority calls such as vehicular pursuits as well as to incidents involving armed offenders. Both cruisers and officers are also equipped with cameras that records both video and audio, as well as equipment that allows for the safe transport of detainees and suspects. This division is usually supplied with seven cruisers.
The Administrative Division vehicles are police vehicles assigned to supervisory staff, and officers assigned to investigatory duties. These vehicles are not equipped for patrol responsibilities or to transport prisoners, although are adequately equipped to respond to critical incidents. This division is usually supplied with three cruisers.
The remainder of the fleet that is not used daily, or are vehicles that are towed are assigned to the Utility Division. This division consists of police cruisers that are uses to provide emergency lighting at construction sites along public roads, as well as a number of trailers and a boat. The trailers consist of two radar/message boards that are used in response to traffic complaints, an enclosed trailer used to store and transport supplies for firearms qualifications for officers, as well as one boat trailer. This division has varying numbers of vehicles assigned, usually under 10.
Acquisition/Disposal
The FSD is responsible for the acquisition of new replacement cruisers, as well as decommissioning following end of life.
Acquisitions are done in accordance with Mass. General Law Chapter 30B and we are members of the Plymouth County and Greater Boston Police Council collective purchasing contracts. These memberships allow for acquisition of vehicles and equipment through authorized bids, bypassing the need for the FSD to have to navigate collecting and awarding bids for services. Following the purchase of a new cruiser (usually one is replaced annually), the FSD works with an upfitter to install the approximately $25,000 in police equipment needed in order to prepare the vehicle for duty. This equipment includes, emergency lighting, sirens, laptop computers and mounts, police two-way radios, cruiser cameras, detainee partitions, and medical supply bags to name some.
Disposal of a police vehicle follows a determination that a vehicle has become unsafe, will no longer pass a Massachusetts Inspection, and/or is financially irresponsible to repair. This usually follows 10-12 years of combined patrol and utility division service. A disposal requires that police markings as well as emergency equipment such as lights and sirens being removed if usable, or rendered inoperable.