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 What do fake cops drive while performing their imaginary duties? Why, fake police cars, of course. But here's the problem – a lot of the fake police cars used to be real ones.
In the state of Washington, when King County Sheriff's vehicles have seen their last days as hard-driven patrol cars, they go to a warehouse in Georgetown where they're transformed into civilian sedans.
But some critics say more can be done to better strip down these patrol cars in order to deter use by police impostors. In just the past couple of months, Washington State troopers have arrested two men in separate cases for impersonating police officers. One of the men was in a 1993 Ford Crown Victoria, with spotlights and push bars, when he tried to get traffic on Interstate 5 to move out of his way.
While most surplus cop cars end up enjoying a second career as taxicabs, some do make it into the used car market, and that's been a problem. The arrest of the man with the old patrol car is an indication of how out of service police cars can be easily mistaken for the real deal. "It used to bother me that old police cars would get sold, and you had some guys wanting to be policemen driving around in these cars," retired Kitsap County Sheriff Pat Jones told local reporters in a recent interview.
"It's just asking for trouble." Jones was sheriff from 1979 to 1999 and has been behind a push for a state law requiring law enforcement agencies to strip everything from their surplus patrol cars that could possibly identify them as law enforcement vehicles, including spotlights and the metal push bars that are mounted on the bumpers of most patrol vehicles. In 2006, at Jones' urging, state Senator Derek Kilmer sponsored a bill to do just that.
But in the Legislature's short session that year, the bill never made it out of committee. "It made it into the red zone, but didn't score," Kilmer said.
The fate of retired cop cars remains a point of contention, he said. "There are agencies, when they sell these vehicles, they aren't removing all of the emergency equipment," Kilmer said. "With that equipment, a person may be apt to mislead people into thinking they are a law enforcement officer, when their intent may be to hurt someone." Former Chief Jones said that his anxiety about misuse of retired cruisers comes from experience.
In 1971, a Port Orchard man named Donald Stephenson roamed a highway in Washington State, flashing the lights of his car to simulate a police vehicle, then pulling over single women and stealing their purses.
One night the woman he pulled over was nursing student Karen Brown, a former high school classmate of his. She recognized him and Stephenson killed her. "I've never forgotten about Karen Brown," Jones said. Add this page to your favorite Social Bookmarking websites        
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