Florida cops are using unmarked Hellcats to hunt speeders
American cops get creative from time to time with the unmarked police cars they employ. Social media videos periodically show semi-trucks and taxi cabs with concealed police lights. But beyond the element of surprise, an undercover Dodge Charger SRT Hellcat has the speed to chase some of the quickest things on Floridian highways.
A social media video shows an unmarked Dodge Charger SRT Hellcat flashing police lights to escort a column of supercars
In a popular Instagram video, a column of supercars cruises along a Florida highway. A moment later, they get passed at high speed by a white Dodge Charger SRT Hellcat Widebody.
Not some jealous Mopar fan buzzing an assembly of Rolls-Royces, Ferraris, and a Ford GT, mind you. This was an unmarked police car, with red and blue emergency lights tucked away in plain sight.
Now, the Dodge Charger isn’t a rare choice for American police departments. The Los Angeles Police Department, the New York Police Department, the Florida Highway Patrol, and many other agencies around the country use some variety of the Dodge Charger Pursuit.
But the SRT Hellcat is an entirely different animal. Granted, Dodge discontinued the supercharged sedan and its coupe sibling, the Challenger, in 2023. But, at the end of its run, the Charger SRT Hellcat produced as much as 807 horsepower from its supercharged 6.2L HEMI V8 in the Jailbreak guise.
This isn’t an isolated incident on American highways, mind you. Police departments have been using marked and unmarked performance cars like Ford Mustangs, Chevrolet Camaros, and Chevrolet Corvettes for years. If not as a working police car, the departments sometimes use them as recruitment tools.
The police in the Sunshine State can use the extra horsepower chasing down ‘Super Speeders’
This July, Florida lawmakers put the state’s new “Super Speeder” law into action. Under the law, excessive speed could land a violating motorist in the back of a police car instead of simply staring at a large ticket.
A Dodge Charger SRT Hellcat might be just the ticket to catch those speeders. After all, the Hellcat HEMI V8 was more than enough to motivate the 4,500-lb sedan to 60 mph in three and a half seconds on its way to over 200 mph. That is, assuming the tires cling for dear life.
