TV News Investigation: Exploding Police Cars

duPont Winners Make
Enterprise A Priority

VOLUME XXI, NUMBER 50 DECEMBER 24, 2001

One 2002 duPont Columbia Silver Baton was awarded to KOLD-TV, Tucson.

Managers there expect enterprise stories from all reporters.
Here's the story of how pursuing unique stories resulted in a duPont winner.

Fiery crashes, gruesome deaths stimulated investigation

In December 1998, an Arizona state trooper was sitting in his car at an accident scene, filling out his report. A drunk driver slammed into the back of the patrol car. Within seconds the trooper's vehicle exploded in flames. He died, trapped inside.
A second accident happened a little over a year later in Phoenix, involving another highway patrol officer. He, too, died.

Reporter Chip Yost began looking into the accidents.

Like the recent Firestone Tire/Ford Explorer story, this had the risk of angering advertisers.
They were taking on a corporate giant.
Was there a design flaw?
Jim Arnold, Vice President and General Manager of KOLD, let the journalists follow the story wherever it led.
"As a general manager, I try to give my department heads guidance of where I want each department to go during the course of the year, and then I let them do it," he said.
They don't go out looking for fights, but this was a significant story.
Arnold told us, "I knew there was a passion about the story, and they thought it was something that would be vital and important information. It was a story that hit home because of the officer who was killed on the interstate here in Tucson."

"Research days" encouraged enterprise

All reporters were expected to dig up new information, and they were given research days occasionally to pursue stories that needed more time.
"Our goal is to have a newscast that doesn't have what the other stations have. We want to be different, and one way to do that is to give reporters time to dig and dig and dig," said Bob Smith, News Director.

Reporters were given research days as often as possible.
"But it is not easy. We have five newscasts a day that we have to fill, and the reporters are responsible for helping us to fill those," he said.

Pursuing stories this way can produce strong results.
"Chip did this by taking a couple of days here and a few days there over a period of about a year," said Smith.
He felt that it was important to give your reporters time to do this kind of story. He believed that at times, the short-term gain should be sacrificed for the long-term.

Car design was alleged to endanger officers

Over several months, reporter Yost investigated whether some police cars were prone to exploding when hit from behind.
He said that at the time officials of the Arizona Department of Public Safety didn't seem overly concerned about the fact that there had been two cases where the units caught fire, because both accidents involved high-impact crashes.
The cars that hit the officers were doing in excess of 65 miles per hour at the time of the collisions.

A lawsuit provided an early lead. During a routine check of court filings, Yost found the family of the first officer had filed a lawsuit against Ford Motor Company.
The lawsuit contained a number of allegations.

"I called the attorney, and found there had been several of these accidents all around the country --- all very similar. They were all high-impact collisions, after which the car burst into flames within seconds. The more people I talked to, the more information I got. Before we knew it, we had a number of people giving us all kinds of information," said Yost.

The reporter's investigation proceeded when there was time available and the leads warranted it.
"I would get a day here and one there when there were enough reporters on that they could afford to let me do research," he explained.
As he would uncover news, such as the lawsuit being filed, Yost would report it for that night's newscast.
It helped to keep advancing the story, and allowed him additional time to steadily pursue gathering more information for the larger report he was working on, while still contributing to the day's news product.

Some sources claimed there was a design flaw in the Crown Victoria autos that were sold to police departments.
In the 1996 model, a sharp bolt was located on the rear axle in front of the gas tank.
"It was in what engineers call 'the crush zone.' According to the experts, when the car was hit from behind, the gas tank was crushed. These sharp bolts would penetrate the gas tank and give off sparks," he explained.
The sparks would ignite the gasoline, and the cars became engulfed in flames.

Ford changed the design, and the bolts were eliminated in the 1997 and 1998. However, Yost said fiery accidents still continued, because the gas tanks were still being crushed in the rear-end collisions. Yost discovered the Florida Highway Patrol had done a major investigation of the problem in 1999, after two of their officers died in rear-end collisions.
In several other accidents, the officers were able to get out alive. Some happened in the Ford Crown Victoria patrol cars. Some were in Chevy Capris, which were no longer on the market.
The Ford Crown Victorias were estimated to be used by 85 percent of the nation's law enforcement agencies.
Because so much of a patrol officer's time was spent in the car, making traffic stops, or being parked at the scene of accidents and investigations, motorists striking the officer or the vehicle was a major concern for police departments.

Special reports focused the issue

The end result of Yost's investigation was a two-part special report that aired in February, 2001.
The first piece ran seven minutes.
It showed video of the various accidents around the country, and talked about all the officers who died in similar accidents.
Yost said a number of CBS affiliates and CNN helped by contributing footage of the other fiery crashes.
"We got under the car and showed the design, and where the gas tank is located. We also talked about why Ford said they think it is safe," he said.

Yost said Ford claimed the fuel tanks exceeded federal standards and were designed to pass a 50 mph rear-impact crash test.
"We got a hold of some crash test tapes that were produced by Ford that showed 50 mph tests that the cars didn't pass. You could see in their own videos where fuel was spilled around the Crown Victoria test cars," he said.
A second call to Ford yielded the comment that all Ford cars meet or exceed the minimum standard of 30 mph.

The father of a police officer killed in a similar accident in New Orleans talked on camera. It was a powerful interview.
"The father wants to make sure what happened to his son doesn't happen to anyone else," said Yost.

The second piece looked at the changes Ford had made in the vehicle design, but questioned whether it was the gas tank that needed to be moved and not just the bolts.

Many of the documents Yost used to build the story came from FOI requests to the state police agencies.
"They were very helpful in the beginning, but toward the end they started being more cautious in what they gave me," he said.
He used FOI requests to find communications between Ford and the Florida Highway Patrol.

About one month after the two-part report aired, the patrol car of a Phoenix police officer was struck from behind, and caught fire.
This officer lived. A fire truck was responding to a call, and happened to be at the intersection when the accident happened. Firefighters quickly put out the flames, and pulled the officer out. He was burned over 70 percent of his body, but survived.

Yost said the DuPont award was the result of hard work by many people in the station. The award citation also saluted Ed Ayala, photographer/editor; and former News Director Bob Richardson.
"Everyone was really into the story when we were working on it, and there was not one word about backing off from it. We had support from management the whole way, and then we got the time we needed to tell it on the air," he added.