The “Scarecrow” Police Car

I thought I’d heard it all but this one is unbelievable.
I’ve mentioned many times how bad the crime situation is in Argentina and how badly equipped police officers are. In spite of their best intentions they tend to be poorly trained and equipped unless they provide both themselves. They get little or no ammo for training, body armor vests are unavailable or in bad condition. The same goes for patrol cars. In most police departments across the country they have a shortage of police cars, many in need of repair.
A police officer told me that even for the vehicles that work, they don’t have enough gas to patrol the streets every day… so they have to pick three or four days a week to patrol the streets. In some cases they just keep enough gas to respond when they actually get a call and patrolling is simply not within their budget.
So, what do you do with a police car that isn’t working? Well, in the civilized world you would fix it, but in Argentina the chief of the local department just rents it to companies, warehouses or gated communities as a scarecrow. They leave the vehicle parked in front of the location they want to protect, maybe turn on the lights at night. If the car isn’t working at all, maybe they connect the lights with a battery and a couple cables, so as to at least dissuade criminals. It is of course illegal to do this. The police and its assets should serve the general public and not be rented away to those few that can pay for it, but then again, its not as if this is the worst we’ve seen happen in Argentina.
I just think the entire scarecrow patrol car is pretty weird, but I guess it may work on some level. Maybe it’s something to think about. Buying an old patrol car or getting some of the blue cop looking lights mounted on a vehicle that looks like a police car and leave it with a timer so that the lights turn on at night or when you’re not home?
FerFAL
Fernando “FerFAL” Aguirre is the author of “The Modern Survival Manual: Surviving the Economic Collapse” and “Bugging Out and Relocating: When Staying is not an Option”.