Why do police forces use such BIG vehicles?
Intimidation.
Why do police wear lotsa leather, wide belts, spiffy uniforms and carry mucho macho gear?
Intimidation.
Something I learned in a Army training film about how to handle anti-anything rioters in the 60’s. Look anonymous, fierce, intimidating, united, unruffled, like a well-oiled, impersonal machine. Supposedly scares the heck outa hippies.
Little did the Army know many of us would have rather been on the hippie side of the crowd, but we were drafted and Canada was too remote.
Just how scared would you be if you looked in the rear-view window and saw a Yugo with a lighted bubblegum machine on top bearing down on you? It’s difficult to find your license when you’re laughing that hard.
The Nashville cops have started switching to that thing called “Impala” and from what I understand, most of them hate it. The Crown Vics were big, powerful cars, with lots of room for the cops to sit in (remember these guys have to stay behind the wheels of these things for a couple of hours while they perform their inspection tours of Krispy Kremes and Stop-N-Robs), and plenty of room to shove drunken rednecks in the backs of the vehicles after a fight at the local watering hole. A heavier car is also more likely to stay on the road at high speeds. Had a Chevette once that I could get up to around 80 MPH or so and the thing would “get light” at those speeds, where as the big old Chrysler I learned to drive in, handled 120 MPH as easily as it handled 20 MPH. As much as we like to make fun of them, cops DO need a big, honkin’ car in this country and probably always will. Its dangerous and inconvient to stand around and wait with a violent offender for a seperate car/truck/van to show up so the crook can be hauled off to jail.
My late grandfather, who was a retired cop, always bought the same kind of car that the police drove. His reason was that you always knew that there’d be a plentiful supply of spare parts. One has to wonder if one of the reasons why the Feds agreed to bail Chrysler out back in the 80s didn’t have to do with the fact that many police departments back then were driving Chryslers.