Douglas County Sheriff starts take-home patrol car program

DOUGLAS COUNTY, Nev. - Patrol deputies with the Douglas County Sheriff's Office (DCSO) can now take their assigned patrol vehicles home with them, something other cities across the county have tried and had overwhelming success with.

DCSO Sheriff Dan Coverly has been looking at ways to maximize the effectiveness of his Patrol Division while also adding benefits to the public and savings to his budget.

Douglas patrol deputies are more efficient with their time and the public is seeing more police visibility since the deputies are fully dressed and ready for duty the minute they pull out of their driveway according to DCSO Sgt.Jeff Schemenauer.

He said there are other benefits as well:

- Deputies can respond to any emergency with no loss of downtime traveling to work and getting their vehicles set up;
- With take-home vehicles, deputies can respond to any emergency from locations all throughout the county;
- Increase in moral along with the added sense of security in the neighborhoods where the law enforcement officers live;

"One key factor for our staff that commute from the Reno area is this program is another retention tool to keep our veteran staff working for DCSO and not jumping ship to a higher paying Reno agency," said Schemenauer.

There have been comprehensive studies by police and sheriff's agencies in many states on take-home car policies, procedures and results.

One of those studies was completed by an independent consulting firm for a similar-sized Washington State police agency. They had a fleet of 30 take-home assigned vehicles to a pool of 34 unassigned vehicles for eight years. The study concluded shared vehicles lasted only 20-26 months while assigned vehicles lasted 60 months. The study found massive reductions in accident and damage repair costs due to the fact take-home cars are better taken care of and the officers are more accountable. Shared vehicles would reach up to $8,400 a year while assigned vehicles averaged a low $1,375. The shared vehicles can also be driven 24-hours-a-day where the at-home vehicles are driven about half that.

Today’s modern police vehicles are a mobile office with full computer access to complete reports, access driver’s license and criminal history information at the touch of a screen.

Not all of the patrol deputies live in Douglas County. Currently, there is one DCSO deputy that lives in South Lake Tahoe with others in Carson City, Dayton, and Reno. Not all choose to use the take-home car either based on where they live, personal preference and or they live a very short distance to work, according to Schemenauer. He said there have been no issues with the vehicles going to homes out of the county, or in the case of South Lake Tahoe, out of state.

DCSO has been slowly building up their fleet over the years and have been able to assign a vehicle to most patrol deputies for the past few years. Research both locally and nationally has allowed the department to justify the program.