The North Bay Police will be following the lead of many police agencies in North America by adopting a new vests and body armour for their frontline officers.
The clothing/uniform budget for 2017 is $80,000, of which $55,304 (or 69%) has been spent to date.
Of the $55,304 spent, $20,000 was spent on vests.
Shawn Devine, the North Bay Police Chief believes the new vests, which were initially used by soldiers and marines, take specific non-immediate use of force equipment and put it up on the vest itself.
“The external vest cover, we are going to a MOLLE (modular lightweight load carrying equipment) vest cover which is going to allow our officer to take a lot of the weight that is presently on their waist belts,” said Police Chief Shawn Devine.
“Now with the deployment of tasers for all front line police officers, it’s meaning that some of our people that are smaller framed don’t have enough space on their belts.
“It’s about 55 to 60 pounds of equipment when you wind up putting your soft body armour on so if you can actually take some of that equipment and put it into someplace more comfortable to wear than I can only see there’s advantages to that.”
The move was approved and recommended by a uniform committee within the service.
Devine says they will also swap out their existing soft body armour.
“That’s where the biggest expense is, is in the panels themselves and they have to be changed out every five years,” said Devine.
“This just happens in 2017 - was the changeout date - so a huge chunk of our uniform budget is on the replacement of the internal soft body armour,” he said.
Devine knows its expensive as the new vest investment pulls out about 69% of the annual uniform budget.
The Chief believes its worth it and he insists they use the highest quality soft body armour for the best protection of the officers.
