More than half of police cars donated by China are out of service

October 30^th, 2012 (InsideCostaRica.com) – More than half of the police patrol cars donated by China to Costa Rica’s Fuerza Publica are out of order. Pablo Bertozzi, Subdirector of the Fuerza Publica, said that out of the 350 police cars donated by China, only 158 are out on the road.

Asked why the vehicles were not functioning, Bertozzi said, “Many of them are related to issues with INS, for accidents, mechanical issues, ball and socket joints, steering problems, suspension, etc. This matter is mainly related to the fact that we are supposed to import the parts that are required for the repairs from China.”

Bertozzi said he was not aware of how the import application process worked, nor what the process in requesting parts entails. However, he did state that a recent shipment of about 70 million colones worth of parts took about 22 days to arrive in Costa Rica, and he hopes that this shipment of parts will get some of the patrol cars back on the road.  Despite the fact that that the last lot of vehicles donated by China in March of this year included spare parts, most of these were body parts, not mechanical parts, he said.

According to data from the Fuerza Publica, there are a total of 75 patrol cars that have been declared a “total loss.” 158 are currently in service, 111 in maintenance and 75 are inoperable. This adds up to 344 units, meaning 6 cars are missing.