Posted: 5/27/2026 8:53:19 PM EDT
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I live 5 miles from Kentucky, across the Ohio River in Southern Indiana. Our current take home vehicle policy was copied from Lou Metro PD who doesn't allow take homes across to Indiana- but they allow Officers to live in any county touching Jefferson County, which Louisville is in, so an Officer could live over an hour away and have a take-home car. Our Chief lives 45 minutes away in another county. Other agencies in Louisville allow Indiana take-homes from my informal questioning to include corrections, Fire/EMS, and the Sheriff's Office (sheriff is not a city agency, though). We are a brand new agency in Metro Gov't, and not under LMPD. I'm working on a proposal to allow take home cars to cross IN, and looking for other agency examples across the US. I met a Christian County, KY Officer last week in a training that lives in Tennessee, and they allow them to have a take home living in TN. Anyone here live in another state from their agency and have a take home car? Any other helpful info? |
| We have had take homes since the early 2000's, however up until a few years ago if you lived out of county you had to leave your car in the county, most parking them at fire stations just inside the county line. ~3 years ago during contract negotiations they changed it so that if you lived within 10 miles of the county you could drive your car too and from work. Then next contract negotiations the FOP got it bumped up to 25 miles. What has worked for our FOP in getting traction for more miles has been comparing surrounding jurisdictions policies, and pointing out how we need to be competitive for recruiting/retention. Currently it is 25 miles out of county, but in state only. Our county borders two other states, so nobody out there can take their cars home. The relationship between our FOP members and dept/county admin is not the best, so its always like pulling teeth to get improvements, and slow. But in typical out of touch admins being better than patrolmen, anyone with a unmarked/convert vehicle has free use of their cars 75 miles outside of county lines, including other states. |
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We had similar and a distance cap if your assigned area was so rural and so lacking that homes and suitable schools were sub par. You could drive to the limit of the county or later the distance cap and store your rig at an approved gov facility, Barracks, Sheriff, DOT etc. Then drive your own car back and forth. In my 25+ years I only lived in adjoining area outside mine for a bit. I transferred on paper but never found a house to buy that I wanted I ended up not particular fond of that sector and was approached due to lack of manpower where I transferred out of and was still domiciled in to take a temp transfer back which I did. Taking a state car out of state was against policy without approval. I routinely broke that rule though living on the state boundary just following certain roads that snaked back and forth or meeting up with my cohorts in Vt to swap intel, coffee, and stories. We’d make details at county lines too for fun. It was productive and basically doubled my mental file of who was up to no good because we shared personal case experience. Funny how many criminals we had both dealt with the same ones. Shit birds will be shit birds. |
The only hyphenated names I like are cartridge names......30-06, 30-40, 38-55 etc.
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The being a bit liberal with that vehicle policy is a good thing if they want to call you in on OT. When guys were forced to leave vehicles in their areas and drive their own car another x miles it cut down on the answering the off shift phone thing. It really changed the way we used to work and the personal responsibility we showed. The new generation guys’ morale is so low most work their 8 and are ghosting dispatch. Sad to hear how low it is since ai left. (It was low then!……..Cuomo and Hochul made it worse) Of course it was unevenly enforced, if you were in the click a hundred miles out of bounds every day or on weekends was not observed. |
The only hyphenated names I like are cartridge names......30-06, 30-40, 38-55 etc.
| Can’t answer the out-of-state question directly, but with my first agency, we were limited to a 20 mile radius of city limits of where we worked, but that was just another county over for me not another state. The agency I retired from gave us a 50 mile radius for take-home cars and lots of agents, especially open the northeast that support New York lived in places like Pennsylvania or New Jersey so as long as it was within around 50 miles those requests were granted. |