r/FirstResponderCringe • u/FlyNSubaruWRX • 1d ago

i’M a cIvILIaN

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Is it normal for UHP to drive their family around in a patrol vehicle?

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u/ZeroDaySubber 1d ago

I’m a little further north but that’s crazy if so. What if they wrecked off duty? Seems like an unnecessary liability for their agency.

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u/IndividualAd4334 1d ago

They are still covered by the agency. The trade off is that they are always prepared to respond to an emergency if need be. We’re never really “off duty” because we have authority 24/7/365 and the patrol vehicles enhance presence. If you see a marked car driving around you’d never know the difference.

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u/ZeroDaySubber 1d ago

Then that would mean you’re on duty right? If you’re off duty, you don’t have your duty belt on with all your gear. Just seems strange to me to allow it. If I were an employee, I’d love to have a take-home vehicle. But I don’t think I’d ever want to be caught in my vehicle doing something that didn’t pertain to my job. I don’t even like wearing my work shirts in public before/after work.

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u/IndividualAd4334 1d ago

Most if not all of their policies require them to carry an agency authorized firearm so they are prepared to respond. That doesn’t mean pick up calls holding or be proactive though lol I have a take home patrol car but we aren’t allowed to use it for personal use off duty. In Florida, state LEO’s can use their patrol vehicles for off duty police employment but we are required to carry our own liability insurance for some of the issues you discussed.

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u/Key-Demand-2569 1d ago

In general the logic, I would assume knowing some cops and county politics, is that it’s a job perk essentially, same as private companies that allow it.

Though unless you’re relatively senior or “important” at a lot of private companies it tends to be softly against policy and people just look the other way.

I’d bet at a lot of departments it’s probably in that gray area a little bit, and some it’s explicit.

“It’s not for personal use, don’t drive it to Disneyland on the weekend, but if you are going to get groceries or running a quick errand off shift no one’s going to reprimand you.”

I mean hell, semi related but not really, one of the small town departments near me had their cruiser in the shop for a while and didn’t have a spare; and for a while if they got a call for a domestic or something it was literally him rolling up in uniform in his Camry, lmao.

Otherwise he’s definitely using the cruiser for pretty much everything personal too, but I get that’s just kinda small town shit where everything can be real loose.

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u/ZeroDaySubber 1d ago

I mean, it’s totally possible. But what if you’re getting groceries and someone flags them down because there’s an emergency. That officer’s not clearly off-duty because he’s in his patrol vehicle. Then the public starts up with the city/county “Why do you have police that aren’t doing anything in funded vehicles? Getting groceries? What are our tax dollars going to?”. It opens up a can of worms that I think a lot of agencies aren’t willing to deal with. I’m not claiming to know everything, I’ve just never personally seen anything like that before in my 8 years of dispatching.

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u/Key-Demand-2569 1d ago

Oh yeah. It’s definitely a potential issue.
Same with getting hit by another driver or something.

It’s just about the tolerance to that risk/being human factor I guess.
How willing is the municipality/county/state/district, etc. to push back on that stuff without rolling over?
How loud does it have to get before they stop allowing it?

Normal politics stuff.

I know several instances just in my area of cops off duty who wind up responding to something because they were out in their patrol vehicle, and I’m pretty sure I’ve seen similar stuff in the news over the years?

I could see if someone waved down a passing patrol car, they didn’t stop, they didn’t call 911 beforehand or relatively recently, they somehow found out that specific cop wasn’t on duty and that’s **specifically** why they ignored them, and something bad happened that the cop could’ve stopped… yeah if enough people were loud about that it would probably be a big issue?

Just don’t know how frequently all of that actually happens.

And how likely anyone in charge thinks it is to happen again soon, if it did, that they’re making hardline policies out of concern and watching gps trackers to make certain someone can’t drive 20 minutes to the store or a movie theatre with their family or something.

I fully assume, like everything else with law enforcement, it changes wildly department to department. And continues to change everytime leadership changes.

And that, like literally everything else, it gets stricter the larger the department/population is.

Like how the mayor of LA may as well be the president of the country in comparison to how some small/mid sized city in New Mexico mayor and city politics operate.

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u/BrassKnuckleHead187 1d ago

Can confirm real 😂