A fuel in blue

This paper reports that U.s. police departments are increasingly turning to natural gas for the same reasons other vehicle fleet operators do: It's much cheaper than gasoline and better for the environment - and it saves on engine wear-and-tear, too. Of course, the police have a lot of company in seeing the merits of natural gas vehicles (NGVs). Nineteen ninety-two proved itself a good year for NGVs before it was more than a few weeks old. President George Bush personally drove one outside the White House, the General Services Administration ordered 625 NGVs from Chrysler and General Motors, and both Ford and Chevrolet planned to begin this spring to manufacture a small number of vehicles equipped to run solely on natural gas. School districts are happy with the savings they reap by running school buses on natural gas, and the fuel has been embraced by other fleets ranging from garbage trucks in Brooklyn to jet-towing vehicles at Denver's Stapleton Airport. But police departments are different. A patrol care is not just transportation for an officer, but his or her workplace on wheels. And perhaps because they deal with life-and-death situations, police officers aren't eager to change anything - even a vehicle fuel - that they see as doing the job. If marketing natural gas for fleet use is a popular curriculum for gas companies these days, police forces are the demanding final exam