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The NYPD’s Newest Vehicles

HBO’s new series “The Deuce” depicts the crime-ridden NYC of the early ‘70s. Back then the police cars looked like this:

[Image credit: Screenshotted from YouTube video by Joseph John Ramos.]

[Image credit: Screenshotted from YouTube video by Joseph John Ramos.]

That’s a 1971 Plymouth Fury. American cars of the era were of course massive, and the models that police departments chose for their fleets were meant to project authority. I didn’t grow up in a particularly bad neighborhood, but I still remember that when I was a kid and the NYPD cruisers rolled through, both the cruiser and the men inside were kinda scary.

Modern-day New York City is a very different place, with crime at historic lows. The NYPD has been seeking for years to counter a negative perception of police, and in my own anecdotal experience, the officers I occasionally encounter are generally approachable and friendly. As a stark reminder of these two things, this morning I saw this:

Those “cruisers” are all parked just a few blocks away from Core77’s NYC office, in nearby Little Italy. The Feast of San Gennaro festival, where a half-dozen blocks have been closed to street traffic and covered in food stalls, is currently in full swing. As with all post-9/11 mass gatherings in New York City, the police presence is visibly ubiquitous, with officers on every corner and an NYPD mobile command center truck monitoring everything.

The Smart cars caught my attention and I checked 'em out up close. Up top they’ve got a light bar, albeit a tiny one with just three lights. Behind the lights is a rear-facing LED message display.

Inside I saw two things that puzzled me: One was that there’s no shotgun, but in its place, the orange glassbreaker you see at the bottom of the photo. The other is the red sticker that says “SINGLE OCCUPANCY ONLY.” I checked the other cars in the row and all of them have it.

So I looked it up, and these NYPD Smart cars aren’t cruisers at all. Instead the department recently acquired them for parking enforcement duties, which explains the glassbreaker; if an officer comes across a car where someone has left their child or dog inside on a hot day, their liberation is just one whack away.

The Smart cars are meant to replace what my friends and I used to call the ice-cream scooters, because they looked like something that a vendor would serve ice cream out of the back of. I’m referring to these:

Those three-wheelers are used for both parking enforcement and park and festival duty, as they can zip around and get an officer over to areas where the cruisers can’t fit. And as crappy as they look, they can cost up to a whopping $27,000 each, Deputy Commissioner Robert Martinez of the NYPD’s Support Services Bureau told the Daily News. In contrast the NYPD purchased nine trial Smart cars for $13,000 a pop–and they have both air conditioning and airbags, both of which the scooters lack.

The lower price of the Smart cars works great for Martinez, but some of his fellow officers were less enthused, according to CBS News:

“When you went to the command staff and said, 'I want to add Smart cars,’ what did they say?” CBS News correspondent Kris Van Cleave asked.

“They said no,” NYPD deputy commissioner Robert Martinez said. “They said the car looks wimpy.”

Martinez prevailed, and the NYPD now has nearly 200 Smart cars spread over all five boroughs. The Times reports that they actually cost $23,400, nearly a $10,000 difference from what the Daily News reported that the trial cars cost, and I assume the extra ten grand is for the livery, radio, light bar, et cetera.

The cars have become so ubiquitous that Martinez himself now refers to them as “scooters,” apparently cementing their replacement of the three-wheelers. And NYPD policy prevents the Smart cars from engaging in pursuits or taking up the role of the traditional cruisers. “When you call 911,” Martinez told the Times, “a scooter’s not coming.”

While it appears that the Smart cars were purchased for economic reasons, there has been a side effect of putting them on the road:

The Smart car is quite possibly the only one that has its picture routinely shared on social media, described as “adorable” or, in the case of one parked in the West Village, “Cuuuuuute.” –the Times

The cuddly cruiser is proving to be a hit, and the public can’t seem to get enough. From small and mighty to the world’s cutest police car, the pictures are generating social media buzz. It makes a park full of strangers approach a police car and the officer like they’re old friends. –CBS

You do have to admit they present a very different appearance to cop cars of old.

Here’s a short clip of Casey Neistat encountering one of the Smart cars and breaking the officers’ balls: