January 2011 Dallas Police Shield Back in the Day
I heard today that a bad guy who was handcuffed jumped from the back seat of a squad car into the front and drove off. Now this guy shot at his girlfriend or something over in Oak Lawn so they really need to catch him. It was all over the news this morning. But it’s nothing new.
I remember this happening from time to time in my career. It was usually when you handcuffed the criminal and put him in the front seat with you. Then you got out of the car, or bailed out chasing the arrested person’s partner. Looking back, that seems so ridiculous having the bad guy up front with us. I remember bad guys throwing up on the officer, computer, the citizens car next to the the squad car, everybody. I always wondered why Dallas never had cages back then?
Yeah okay I know that the sanitation department and water works get most of the Cities money, and we and the Fire Department get what is left over .It’s always been this way. Trash trucks were and still are always a major priority it seems. Volvo trash trucks? Yep we got ‘em. Yep, the police department just could not afford the cages. The only cages I remember were the massive steel units in squad cars that were built by the City for the K-9 officers. They of course had no glass and were ventilated so the dogs could breathe and take advantage of the cars AC.
Anyway we never got cages until the last five years or so. I believe that a local grant bought them. Okay, I retired after 31.5 years and I know the police way of thinking. WE always want what other departments have until we have it. And like all police, then we don’t want it. That’s the police way.
Then of course I hear some officers complaining that they can’t reach a prisoner who is going crazy behind the cage. All right, just leave him to go nuts back there. At least he’s not sitting next to you, or next to your partner in the back seat.
And there is the complaint that they can’t put the seat all the way back, put their briefcase in the backseat, your buddies can’t ride in the backseat to get something to eat, you name it. I drove a few before I retired and they took a little getting’ used to. But you don’t have the scumbag puking on you anymore. Plus you don’t have to listen to his or her ridiculous questions over and over like, “Why am I being arrested?” Or, just “Where DO you live officer?” I remember this one.
And you can hose out the back seat, of all sorts of stuff.
Okay, I didn’t spend eight hours a day in a car with a cage. But it just seems like a good idea. You know, all police departments in the civilized world have made cages work. Why can’t we?
The lost but now found Charger looked new, with an equipment number 80... something. That means a 2008 model city vehicle. Where was the cage? By the time you read this, hopefully the squad car thief will have been arrested.
The new black and white squad cars look cool. The City popped for the money and that’s great. Do you remember when Dallas led the pack, and got tons of awards back in 1991 or so with the Whale Tail Caprices? The reflective billboard “Dallas Police” was kind of revolutionary for the time. Others copied it. Kind of old fashioned now, but a big deal then. DPD does a lot of things right believe it or not. It’s the people my friends.
I’ve seen pictures of DPD cars in the early fifties that were black and white. Around 1957 they went to all black. Stayed that way until the 1966 Chevy Caprices, which were white. It gets confusing around 1970 however. The Grand Fury’s of around 1970 and this writer remembers this from cruising Buckner around 1971, where I remember squad cars with upright shotgun racks and the police cars were a blue-green color. They were supposed to be metallic blue apparently but somebody at the factory read the color code wrong. Then there WAS a real metallic blue in the other early Grand Fury’s, then finally a white. The Plymouth Satellites were white and the AMC Matadors were white in 1975. They ran terrible but had great air-conditioners.
Some masters degree City wiz kid said at one time in the early 1970’s that all City vehicles should have the same logo, and be the same color. At the time the City thought a plant with three green leafs demonstrated what the City wuz all about!
Most Dallas freaks who hung out at “The Cellar” on Commerce Street and “The End of Cole” on Cole Avenue (now Javier’s,) in the 1970’s thought ,through their purple haze, that the logo looked somewhat like a marijuana leaf. But alas all City vehicles had the plain, blue reflecturized letters with the green leaf until the billboard logo about 1991.
Remember when DPD led all other departments in technology? When I was in Tactical in 1987, I was called to the then radio shop from working the State Fair and had the first big, black, in car computers installed in my 1985 Grand Fury. Cool! We were one of the first to get in-car computers. We thought that the DPD was something special. And we were.
The only bad thing about the first computers was that the old units came off their mountings during crashes and were the cause of some officers being injured, and sadly some mortally back in the eighties and nineties.
W.H.Croom, II #3973
Dallas Police Retired
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