Large philanthropic efforts often come with lofty ambitions. Or at least more ambitious delivery timetables than legal and financial realities allow.
Take an $8 million collaboration of business leaders earlier this year to equip the Detroit Police Department with 100 new police cruisers and 23 ambulances – which were expected to enter service in a few months, a few months ago, and some of which need another three months to complete some needed refits.
LawOfficer: Donors Give $8M to Detroit for Ambulances, Police Cars
About half of the donated vehicle fleet still sits parked on a Bloomfield Township lot along Telegraph Road, more than 20 miles away from Detroit police headquarters.
LawOfficer: Detroit Receives 100 New Police Cars
Part of the delivery holdup stems from a July 2003 consent judgment in federal court, which includes a requirement for the police department to outfit all of its patrol cars with in-vehicle camera systems.
"The cars need these in-vehicle cameras, and we're waiting to be ready to go on that. The only holdup is getting some delivered, and it's not the fault of anyone locally, not of Penske (Corp., which coordinated the donations) or of the DPD," said U.S. Attorney Barbara McQuade.
"The order was placed so the cars would have them, but it wasn't yet ready from the manufacturer. But that's nothing anyone could control, or a part of any malfeasance or neglect of duty in Detroit. We're just told they won't be ready until January."
McQuade has taken part in discussions with the donor businesses and with Robert Warshaw, a court-appointed police monitor in charge of overseeing police department compliance with the 2003 judgment in a U.S. Department of Justice lawsuit. The department is about 93 percent compliant with that order and hopes to be fully compliant soon, she said.
Warshaw could not be reached for comment. The 2003 consent judgment states in part that the department shall "require … activation of scout car video cameras at all times (an) officer is on patrol."
Anthony Pordon, executive vice president of investor relations and corporate development at Penske Corp., said the stored vehicles are undergoing several different refits to incorporate cameras and other new equipment that police officials requested after the first vehicles arrived at the city in the summer.
A set of new prisoner partitions for some vehicles just arrived Thursday, he said, and at least one or two additional vehicles have been entering service each week as the modifications get completed.
"This has all been known, and it has been in process for some time," Pordon said of the refits. "The video manufacturer (for the cameras) changed to one with a new high-definition camera system, and each vehicle can take three to five days to outfit with all of the modifications."
Mayor Dave Bing originally announced in March that the city would get 23 EMS vehicles and up to 100 police patrol cars as part of a collaboration among local business leaders and city officials. In August, when the first 15 cars and 10 ambulances were unveiled to the media, Penske Chairman Roger Penske said the remaining 85 patrol cars would be on the streets in the next 60 to 90 days – or by next month.
The remaining EMS units would also be ready around year's end, Penske had predicted, replacing the city's entire ambulance fleet.
Pordon and Dave Blaszkiewicz, president and CEO of the Downtown Detroit Partnership, which coordinated the donation, said they still expect the full fleet to reach the city by year's end, even if some vehicle modifications must happen later.
"We're trying to outfit those as fast as we can, but there are a number of electronics and other components and other manufacturer components," Blaszkiewicz said. "And some of these specific units have not been in their (Detroit's) fleets yet and need to be programmed."
Businesses that collaborated with Penske on the fleet donation were Ford Motor Co., Chrysler Group LLC, Quicken Loans Inc., the Kresge Foundation, General Motors Co., Platinum Equity LLC, FirstMerit Bank and Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan.
Robert Warfield, the mayor's director of communications, told Crain's last week that about 55-60 vehicles still need cameras or other modifications, but that several would enter service within days.
The 100 police cruisers comprise about an even number of Dodge Charger Pursuits, Ford Taurus Interceptors and Chevrolet Caprice PPV, and Warfield expects virtually all of the Chargers would be in service after some new equipment that arrived last week is fully installed.
Installations on the Interceptors and Chevrolets may require take a few more weeks, Warfield said, although Pordon said the HD video was not expected to be installed in some vehicles before February.
Steve Gorecki, senior manager of media relations at Schaumburg, Ill.-based Motorola Solutions Inc., confirmed that company has shipped some data terminals for the new Detroit police cars and EMS vehicles, but the video equipment is being supplied to Detroit from Alameda, Calif.-based Data 911 Mobile Computer Systems, which that company confirmed Friday.
"We could have chosen to wait and have all the equipment before the donation, but we're choosing not to do that, because we want the cars (that are ready) available for our police now," Pordon said.
Terry Rhadigan, executive director of product and technology communications at GM, said Friday the automaker supplied a police variant of its Caprice for the city and he was not aware of any changes to its specifications while it was in production.
Kevin Frazier, senior vice president of external affairs and information technology at Chrysler, deferred comment on the Detroit vehicle fleet to Pordon.
Twitter: @chadhalcom
