“What I’ve learned over the years is that the best way to get a really good product at the end is to really collaborate with your customers at the beginning.” This idea is central to the advances that earned the City of Glendale, Arizona, a 2026 Police Fleet Innovator award.

Craig Croner, deputy director of field operations at Glendale, believes that problems cannot be solved in a vacuum. For Glendale, the best results come from collaboration.

After redesigning the police vehicles to better serve K9 officers, working with the police and waste departments, and engaging manufacturers to provide realistic solutions, Glendale found new solutions to their problems.

Keeping Cool

Summertime in Arizona means temperatures over 117 degrees. For K9 officers on duty, that heat can be hazardous. The K9 vehicles they had were old and relied on passive airflow to cool the rear compartments. That dated system was insufficient to deal with the Arizona heat.

Consulting the human officers who work alongside the K9s, Croner worked with a local vendor to develop a solution that would improve the new K9 builds as well as being able to retrofit existing builds to alleviate buying a new fleet of K9 patrol units.

“We wanted to redesign the new canine vehicle specifically for the cooling of the canine officer,” Croner said.

The solution was to upfit the new K9 vehicles with 300-CFM blowers mounted on the rear cage. The HVAC system was then routed directly to that compartment, directing air conditioning toward the K9 officer cage.

Actively pushing air toward the K9 dramatically reduced temperatures. The new system has been in service for over a year now with great success. The design has worked so well that other agencies in the area have adopted the system for their K9 fleets.

A Seat at the Design Table

While the project was a success in its design and development, the true accomplishment was in the teamwork leading up to its implementation.

Knowing that the project couldn’t be successfully completed from inside the shop, Croner invited three K9 officers to work directly with him and the vendor to help develop the design.

“I actually reached out to the officers who had canines, and we had three officers down there to work with us and the vendor,” Croner said. “How is this going to work for you from your perspective, from a customer-use perspective?”

That invitation stood out to the officers. Croner remembered hearing: “Nobody really ever asked us our opinion.” For Croner, this was confirmation of what he already knew: that innovation is not about having all the answers, but knowing the right people to bring into the conversation.

The cooling system was not the only part of the K9 vehicle that needed another look. One of the department’s more aggressive dogs had learned to push its snout between the cage and the vehicle, where it could reach and chew the headliner, destroying the passenger-side airbag.

The damage became significant enough that the team redesigned the cage to block access to that area. They also reinforced the door-popper system after experiencing failures, building those lessons into the new vehicle design.

Small Investment, Long-Term Strategy

The redesign is still new, with over a year of field use, and while it is too soon for Croner to call it a finished project, the results have been promising.

Air conditioning performance can decline as vehicles age, and K9 vehicles face the added challenge of dog hair that can clog passages and impair HVAC performance over time. So far, they have not encountered those issues.

“We don't have any breakdowns. We're just doing our routine maintenance and the officers are happy,” Croner said.

For other K9 patrols looking to make similar improvements to their K9 vehicles, the solution doesn’t need to break the budget. According to Croner, the motor assembly itself can cost roughly $800 to $1,200, and he estimated a department could make the move from passive to positive airflow for around $2,000. Purchasing a new vehicle is not necessary.

“It's a pretty small investment for a long-term strategy,” he said, noting that several departments in the area are now using the system.

Other improvements require more planning. Redesigning or reinforcing the cage would be more difficult and costly to retrofit. Croner said those changes may make more sense when a fleet is already replacing a vehicle and can incorporate them into the new build rather than removing and rebuilding an existing cage.

More Than a Street Sweeper

While the K9 vehicles were top priority, that is not the only area of the Glendale fleet where Croner saw an opportunity for improvement.

The police department commander wanted to expand their license plate recognition capabilities. When Croner was asked to install the technology on a vehicle already making rounds on the city streets, the street sweeper offered a solution.

Instead of purchasing another vehicle or putting another officer on the road, Fleet, Police, and Solid Waste worked together to equip a sweeper already in service with the license plate recognition cameras. Accomplishing this, however, was not a straight line.

When the vendor arrived to install the system, the team learned it had never installed one on a street sweeper before. Croner called in one of his senior technicians, who helped develop the mounting brackets and work through wiring differences.

Soon, they began seeing results. At the time Croner submitted the project for the Police Fleet Innovator award, the sweeper had recorded approximately 173,000 license plate recognitions and 19 hits involving wanted vehicles. Beyond identifying those vehicles, the data could help police understand where a vehicle was moving throughout the city and develop a strategy for interception.

For Croner, the innovation was more than the technical application; it was finding another use for assets taxpayers were already funding.

“If you look at it from a taxpayer perspective, we're not buying another vehicle. We're using an existing vehicle. It's already in this fleet. It's already, you know, doing its route,” Croner said. “From a fleet management perspective, I'm not buying two vehicles. We're not putting extra people out there.”

No additional police vehicle, no additional driver assigned solely to collect plate information, and no interruption to the sweeper's existing public works mission needed.

Making More of What You Have

At the City of Glendale, innovation is not about adopting the newest technology; it is about identifying the problem, including the people closest to it, and then using the resources already available to you in new ways.

“Working collaboratively with all people and all interests that were involved — and with this kind of communication — that's really what fleet leadership should be doing,” Croner said.

For other fleet leaders looking to innovate, Croner's projects serve as a reminder that the answer may already lie within the operation. Sometimes the biggest change starts not with another vehicle or another piece of technology, but with asking the people around you how an existing resource could work better.