LEAGUE CITY, TX – A former League City mayor is questioning a city policy that allows most police officers to take their patrol cars home and to extra jobs, according to The Daily News newspaper. Pat Hallisey, who was mayor in 1994 and 1995, oversaw the hiring of the police chief who put the policy into effect.

The current League City Police Department’s take-home policy allows officers who have been with the department 10 years to have a personal patrol car. It also allows officers whose positions require a vehicle, such as detectives and SWAT team members, to take their cars home. Fifty-nine of the department’s 93 officers have a take-home vehicle.

The city pays for the gas to get to those other cities, and the policy allows officers to drive the patrol cars to extra jobs as long as its in an approved set of neighboring cities: Friendswood, Webster, Kemah, Dickinson, and Clear Lake Shores. They are also allowed to run errands in League City, as long as they are armed and appropriately dressed.

While Hallisey argued that the extra driving time costs the department and taxpayers thousands of extra dollars, others said that when patrol cars are individually assigned to officers, they last longer because they aren’t being constantly driven like fleet cars.