Panama City Beach Police are proudly showing off their 2022 Corvette Stingray which was seized from a Georgia man. It’s the latest addition to the fleet, complete with a nice wrap which even features the phrase “Seized for service” at the bottom of the doors.
Watch a guy crash his rental C8 Corvette.
As one might imagine, these types of moves are controversial, but we see them all the time. In this case, as is true in many of them, the C8 Corvette was seized from a man police say they caught smuggling drugs into the community. We thought the flow went from Florida to the rest of the East Coast, but okay.
That was last year. Now it’s property of the police department and they’re reveling in it. But don’t expect to see officers using this to hand out tickets anytime soon, even though it could run most cars down no problem.
Instead, this C8 is bound to be a community relations car. It will be carted to events, schools, etc. as a way to break the ice and get people interacting with police in a social sort of way. We do think it’s important that members of any community understand officers are regular people, even when in uniform.
But not everyone is going to find using a seized mid-engine sports car charming or cute. Some find the act of police using asset seizures to keep performance vehicles wasteful and/or that it sends the wrong message. And we can see why they think that.
Other police departments have brought Corvettes, Hellcats, Camaros, etc. into their fleet in similar ways and we’re sure we’ll see even more. Is it right? We’ll let you decide that.
Image via X
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