I went out to lunch today and it was in the 28-32 degree range. We opted for Chinese and as we pulled up to our local spot, there were two State Police cars parked side-by-side with the engines running - nobody inside. Nobody was inside because they were both at the counter ordering lunch. They proceeded to sit down and chat, drink some hot tea, get their food, eat, chat some more and leave. This went on for 45 minutes.....while the cars are parked outside running. We all scratched our heads on this one and even though none of us are of the "tree hugging" variety, we all thought it was pretty irresponsible. In fact, we couldn't believe it. I Googled some things tonight and found a few answers on Q&A type boards by officers, but I'm not sure I buy them. One stated that with all the equipment running in the car (pc, communication, video cam, etc) it's a big drain on the alternator to leave that stuff on with the car not running. He explained that if they needed to get in their cars quickly and leave - it would then be too time consuming to start up the pc....etc. It was determined by their dept that it's better to allow the car to run up to a certain point. Another answer stated that in colder weather it's even a bigger drain with all that equipment in the car and you need to keep the alternator primed. I don't know much about this so I was wondering if anybody else ever heard any reasoning for this. It struck me as odd.
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Click on my name for a link to a story about police chasing man who took off in a running police car.
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