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In 2011, Virginia Tech police officer Deriek Crouse was fatally shot in his parked patrol car at close range while conducting a traffic stop on campus. Earlier this year, Massachusetts Institute of Technology officer Sean Collier was also killed in his cruiser, allegedly by the suspects in the Boston Marathon bombings. Nam, who has since been promoted to a detective, says she would often work alone when she was on patrols. When she was making traffic stops, or had a suspect detained in her vehicle, the suspect's friends or family members would frequently approach her car. "We're trained to look up and look around at all times, but having that extra feature in the vehicle would help," she said. Police are already helping improve the system. Ellison says InterMotive plans an upgrade that will make the brake lights automatically come on when someone is approaching based on comments from an officer who was testing it. No cars with the new system had been sold as of mid-July, but Ford hopes it will give police departments another reason to consider its cars. Ford dominated the police market for decades with the Crown Victoria sedan, but it lost some sales after it discontinued the rear-wheel-drive Crown Victoria in 2011 and replaced it with all-wheel-drive police vehicles based on the Taurus sedan and Explorer SUV. Some departments that prefer rear-wheel-drive cars for their speed in chases have switched to the Dodge Charger or Chevrolet Caprice.
Representatives for Dodge and Chevrolet said they aren't yet offering systems like Ford's. None of the company's would reveal their current share of the police car market.
[Associated
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