Fire Chief Tim Nelson never imagined he'd be making this request but with more than 300 mass shootings last year, he is asking the town to pay for ballistic equipment for firefighters. He asked the Joint Capital Planning Committee for $17,500 to purchase 10 vests and helmets, two sets for each of the town's five ambulances.
"Look at the world we're living in," he said. The PBS website reports 355 mass shootings in 2015.
He said it would just take one incident to put his crew at risk. "We've got two colleges and one university. We need to be prepared," he said.
Last week fire crew responded to the University of Massachusetts campus with reports of an armed gunman on campus, a report that put the campus in lockdown for two hours.
He said police didn't know where the alleged gunman was. He said when he arrived UMass police were out with their long guns.