JARED BARTON
Columbus Telegram, Neb.
(TNS)
Over the next year or so, Columbus residents will notice Columbus Police and Fire vehicles starting to look a little different.
The Columbus Police Department cruisers were recently approved for a little bit of a rebrand, with vehicles incrementally adding new logos and coloration patterns.
To pay for the new graphics, the Columbus City Council voted to reallocate $16,100 from $40,000 of capital improvement program funds that had originally been designated for the purchase of rifles for the department. Interim Police Chief Brett Strecker told the council that they are starting with just a few vehicles, then progress year after year.
New Columbus Police vehicle striping and lettering
A conceptual rendering of the rebranded Columbus Police Department design for police cruisers.
“This is a change that’s probably been needed for quite some time. Our striping right now is outdated… This is going to look a lot nicer. It’s way more visible, and we just decided, if we can, let’s just do all the cars and do it that way,” Strecker said.
The reallocation of funds also allows officers more autonomy in choosing their rifles, according to the city council agenda packet.
The same resolution approved the purchase of two mobile fingerprint readers for $2,500 each. The devices will enable officers to scan fingerprints when they’re out in the field and cross-reference them with those in the penal system database.
In a different resolution, the police department was approved for a $27,736.12 purchase of nine new radar units and two TrafficStat devices. The radar units are replacing those in the department nearing end of life and the TrafficStat devices will be used to monitor various areas around town that have had reports of intense speeding.
“It’s difficult for us to enforce that because dates and time or times of day, days of the week, we don’t know when this is going on, so we just can’t have a car sitting there 24/7,” Strecker said. “We just don’t have resources for that. What this will do, if someone goes by at a high rate, it’s kind of like the speed trailer, but it’ll record date and time that it took place.”
The new devices will allow the department to analyze speeding patterns, which will then allow officers be deployed where they can catch speeders in the act.
For Columbus Fire Department, the council approved the purchase of a new ladder truck for $2.15 million, a new fire engine for $940,000 and five CPR devices for a combined $78,433.61, with funds being dispersed over two fiscal years. The department also received a trade-in value of $25,000 toward the cost of the CPR devices.
Simply put, the current ladder truck is not usable, Columbus Fire Chief Ryan Gray told the council.
“We are in desperate need of a ladder truck,” Gray said. “Our 2009 has had significant issues long before I’ve been here and it’s unreliable. We have dropped it to liability only. It is sitting in the apparatus bay. We will not take it out. We have to have the ladder truck.”
Columbus Fire Chief Ryan Gray
Columbus Fire Chief Ryan Gray answers questions during the Oct. 6 Columbus City Council meeting regarding the purchase of a fire engine and a ladder truck for the department.
Unlike civilian vehicles, fire trucks are not evaluated based on mileage, but rather on the number of hours they’ve been in use, Gray said. The current ladder truck is functional in this regard, but the hydraulic systems that operate the ladder are too far out of date to safely function in emergencies.
It’s not perfect, Gray said, but with the wait times and costs typically associated with these things, they go