The Los Angeles Police Department purchased a pricey fleet of electric BMWs last year, but most of them are either being misused or not used at all, according to a Los Angeles CBS affiliate investigation.
BMW delivered one hundred electric cars to the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) every three years through a program designed to make the department green, yet many of those vehicles are either sitting idle or officers are using them as a type of show-and-tell throughout the community.
“It’s all a part of saving the Earth, going green … quite frankly, to try and save money for the community and the taxpayers,” LAPD Deputy Chief Jorge Villegas told a reporter with CBS Los Angeles. The program, which began in April 2016, has apparently turned into a money burner.
The investigation also found that most of the electric cars have only been used for a few thousand miles from the beginning of the project until August 2017.
One reporter watched as a commanding officer with the LAPD’s fiscal operations took a zero-emission vehicle out for a spin to get a manicure. Officer Annemarie Sauer spent more than an hour inside the nail salon before walking out with a manicurist and gesturing toward where the BMW was parked.
“First of all, if they’re going to be using $10 million of our money, or basically leasing $10 million of equipment, they ought to have a damn plan!” local political watchdog Jack Humphreville told CBS. “Isn’t that just a tremendous waste of money?”
The move to amp up the city’s electric vehicle fleet comes as Democratic lawmakers in California aim to force commuters into Teslas and other electric vehicles.
Assemblyman Phil Ting, for instance, floated the idea last year to introduce a bill in January 2018 that would ban the sale of produced after 2040. The Democrat said California drivers must adopt electric vehicles if the state is going to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
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