Police violate city policy on take-home vehicles

The Colorado Springs Police Department’s tracking of dozens of take-home government-owned vehicles is so incomplete no one can say if officers are using them to respond to emergencies, commuting or personal errands.

It’s not just poor record-keeping; it’s a violation of city policy, one top police officials say needs to be addressed immediately.

Nearly all of the mileage logs for department vehicles that police get to drive home after work either are incomplete or missing, according to documents obtained under an open-records request.

Top brass, who were unaware of the problem until The Gazette requested the records, acknowledged that oversight has been lax and pledged to bring accountability back to the perk.

“I’ll say flat out that I don’t think we’ve kept as good track as we should have,” Deputy Chief Pete Carey said.

“I’m not prepared to say that someone is going to get fired over this,” he added. “But I am going to tell you that we’re going to look into this and make sure there’s an accountability piece to this in the future.”

Carey also promised to take swift action, including an analysis to determine whether certain employees — such as commanders who appear to be using their city-owned vehicles primarily for commuting and officers who live outside the city limits — really need take-home cars to do their jobs.

Although almost impossible to verify, police officials said they were confident that employees with city-owned vehicles haven’t been using them for personal business.

“We’re confident that we don’t have a bunch of people out there driving their (city-owned) cars to shop for Christmas presents,” police spokesman Lt. David Whitlock said.

“If we did, we would be disciplining those people, and we’re absolutely confident that the community knows that police officers have take-home cars because when we’re needed, we’re going to be there to give them the service that they require,” he said.

That was impossible to verify, however, based on the records provided by the Police Department.

Employees with city-owned vehicles are required to maintain mileage logs that include miles for commuting and responding to emergency calls after work.

More than 100 city employees have take-home cars, costing taxpayers about $131,000 for fuel and about $112,000 for operations and maintenance through Oct. 31, according to a report compiled by the city. See a database of the vehicles here.

The majority of city employees with take-home vehicles, 81, work in the Police Department.

The Gazette requested mileage logs for police after City Councilman Darryl Glenn proposed cutting back on the number of take-home vehicles for police employees as a cost-saving measure, a proposal that he quietly dropped without explanation.

Police employees with take-home vehicles include three deputy chiefs, eight commanders and several undercover officers and members of the SWAT team and K-9 unit

A stack of mileage logs provided to The Gazette revealed that only two commanders and two unidentified employees turned them in for the entire year, although the department claims the number is closer to 16. Possible explanations for the discrepancy include a change in job assignment or vehicle, Whitlock said.

“Just because there’s not a January through October log doesn’t mean that there isn’t one,” he said.

The rest of the mileage logs for the Police Department are either incomplete or missing.

“I’m certainly as guilty as anybody else,” said Whitlock, who hasn’t turned in any mileage logs for his city-owned 2009 Ford sedan.

Carey said the department’s fleet manager was laid off last year.

“I’m not trying to make it sound like we’re making excuses, but he was the guy that was originally tasked” with making sure that mileage logs were turned in, he said.

“I’ll take that one on the chin. That’s my job to make sure that (responsibility) got picked up,” Carey said.

Despite the missing or incomplete mileage logs, police continued to defend the use of take-home government vehicles, pointing to several situations where they’ve led to a quicker response, including the deadly December 2007 shooting at New Life Church.

“It’s the availability that’s the issue when you run a business 24/7,” Whitlock said.

The existing mileage logs for police show that take-home vehicles are being used primarily for commuting. Round-trip daily commutes for police range from six miles to more than 88, according to city documents.

For example, Cmdr. Skip Arms, who drives a 2004 Chevrolet Trailblazer, logged nearly 3,300 miles commuting but only 69 miles for “en route” work-related calls.