That's according to Mayor Tishaura Jones, who made an appearance on St. Louis Public Radio's Politically Speaking Hour on Friday afternoon. Posed a listener question by host Jason Rosenbaum, Jones pointed to the vehicles themselves, rather than the officers driving them into things, as the source of the problem.
“Our cars have changed. We used to drive Impalas, now we drive Tahoes, and those are pretty difficult to steer in difficult situations,” Jones said. “Could police actually benefit from or, I would say, our new police benefit from more hours with Tahoes to get used to how they operate, how they move, how they turn? Absolutely. But we also have to realize these are different and larger vehicles that we’re driving nowadays versus back in the past.”
It seems to us to be a bit rude to suggest that the best-selling full-size SUV in the United States, which outsold every other vehicle in its class the last two years in a row according to a recent report from The Fast Lane Truck, is simply too difficult for St. Louis' dumb cops to drive. We here at the RFT, for example, would never dare say such a thing. But that's what the mayor is suggesting, and considering the fact that the Tahoe is the favored vehicle of police departments across the nation, the vast majority of which do not have a consistent track record of running them into signs and buildings and light poles and sometimes flipping 'em, she might be on to something.
For what it’s worth, the lawyer representing the owners of the bar the cops infamously plowed into in December seems to agree with her assessment.
"My first SUV was a 1993 Ford Explorer. I crashed into zero bars or churches," Javad Khazaeli tells the RFT. "Much less left the scene of a crash without telling anyone. Virtually every police department in America drives SUVS. This is a uniquely St Louis problem."
In any case, it's hopeful that we're at least closing in on a solution to an issue that has been increasingly menacing the streets and buildings of St. Louis in recent months. Turns out all we have to do is get the force into driver's ed, maybe slap some "Caution: Student Driver" signs on the back of some police vehicles, and we can finally start making some headway.
Here's hoping everyone survives.
Editor's note: The headline on this story was adjusted a few hours after publication to more accurately describe the mayor's comments, which did not directly call the cops dumb but rather implied it.
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