Fort Worth Police to audit compliance and policies allowing take-home patrol cars

Fort Worth Police Chief Neil Noakes is taking some heat after a report showing some of his officers may be taking advantage of the city's take-home car privileges.

An audit shows city employees who are allowed to drive city-owned cars after hours may not be using them according to the rules, and most are police officers.

When you have an emergency, you typically want the city to respond to it quickly, which is why the city has a take-home vehicle policy for certain employees, including the Public Management Department, the Fire Department, and the Police Department.

Employees have to sign a form that they agree with rules like only using the car for authorized purposes, not traveling outside the authorized range without permission, and consenting to background checks.

The Fort Worth Lab, a city department that handles data, research and budget, conducted a compliance audit.

It found that 95% of people who took home city vehicles were police officers, compared to 3% taken by public management, and 2% taken by firefighters.

It found that 58% of the city's take-home cars are outside the city limits, and 95% of those are police cars.

Some police cars were frequently going as far as Wise County.

Comparatively, most firefighter and PMD take-home cars stayed within a 10-mile radius of the city.

“That is obscene to me when I look at that map," said City Councilmember Elizabeth Beck. "To think that that many vehicles aren’t just traveling outside of the city limits, outside of our ETJ, outside a 10-mile buffer, but we’ve got folks traveling … you know, hours away.”

Christianne Simmons, presenting findings from the Lab, said gas and maintenance costs for all those cars come from the city's coffers.

“I’m not comfortable with our taxpayers footing this bill," Beck said, asking for a follow-up report with those costs.

Beck had called for the compliance review after she had, "a sense that something was awry," she said at Tuesday's city council work session. "And that sense turned out to be correct. We weren’t following policy but more importantly, we did not have an eye on our assets. It is our job, as a council, to be good stewards of the tax dollars that are given to us by our residents."

Beck said she had asked for this data almost six months ago.

“It took this long because we didn’t have the data because we were not following the policy," she said. “Previous to this, we did not know where they were going. I think it's time to really have a discussion about a reasonable policy."

Fort Worth Police Chief Neil Noakes acknowledged Beck's point, saying the forms officers needed to fill out to justify taking home cars after-hours, as well as periodical audits of them, weren't being done properly.

"Is that form being utilized?" Beck asked.

"Not the way it should be. Once this came up, we started looking into it," Noakes responded.

Noakes said he took full responsibility.

“Any blame or any finger pointed, it all goes right here," Noakes said. "I was not doing what I needed to do to make sure that everyone was following policy as they should, to make sure that these after-hours usage forms were being done as they should. That’s something that we’re in the process of correcting right now.”

Some members of the City Council agreed that there needs to be more levels of accountability in the take-home vehicle policy, and others said they didn't want to wait six months to take corrective action.

Mayor Pro Tem Gyna Bivens said she wanted to hear from police officers, too, about their usage of cars, and wondering if there would be a hit to morale with a change of policy.

“There will be a hit to morale, there’s no question about it," Noakes said.

He said some officers may lose their take-home privileges as a result of this compliance review.

"Not something anyone wants to hear in a time where we’re struggling to hire and retain who we can. I hate to have for someone to be disgruntled," he said.

Mayor Mattie Parker said the cars outside city limits didn't bother her as much if they were being used for city purposes. Right now, the city isn't tracking whether the cars are being used strictly for business.

The Lab will now continue to do its research and work to answer additional questions from the City Council. The Lab will come up with policy recommendations and they're scheduled to update the City Council sometime between May and June 2024.

Below is a video published by the city explaining the review and action plan to the public. Click here to watch it on YouTube.