Columbus cops become manner police with new blue uniforms, ball caps
White button-down shirts and 8-position hats? Which is soooo previous ten years.
Officers and sergeants with the Columbus Division of Police will quickly be a little far more “style forward” when they patrol city streets and reply to phone calls for provider.
Opting for comfort and ease in excess of formality, the division is phasing out day-to-day use of the white shirts and eight-place hats that have for many years been staples. Officers will instead transition to wearing a navy blue, polyester-mix shirt with an optional matching blue baseball cap. The division’s navy blue pants will continue being the very same.
The new uniform will be implemented across the division during the 1st fifty percent of 2022.
New Columbus police uniforms: Simpler care, a lot easier to wear
The new shirts will have an embroidered badge and the officer’s identify and badge selection embroidered on their shirts, the two of which need to be a lot more seen to citizens, Sgt. Joseph Albert reported.
The new shirts will carry on to have a room for officers to use their physique cameras, and are designed to be extra comfortable and practical for officers, Albert said.
For the exterior vests, which are now offered with the modify in shirts, there is a suspender-like wearable possibility, enabling for more equal body weight distribution and lessening hip and lessen-again stress.
Bicycle, motorcycle and mounted unit officers will have reflective striping on the sleeves of their shirts as a security measure, Albert claimed.
The new shirts are also expected to be easier to hold cleanse and conceal dust than the white shirts, Albert reported. The navy blue is comparable to what is worn by Columbus firefighters.
Police will proceed to don the white uniform shirts at formal events, these types of as promotions, ceremonies and funerals, and they will carry on to be worn by some command team.
The new uniform structure course of action began in March 2019 with a survey in which almost 1,600 officers furnished input. Albert claimed that a lot more than 90% of the officers who responded mentioned that they required to be ready to put on their bulletproof vests on the exterior of their uniform shirt, which is fewer strenuous on officers’ hips and backs, as properly as getting much more breathable, trying to keep officers’ entire body warmth down.
Officers started screening new uniform variations shortly right after the survey in 2019, Albert said, and Chief Elaine Bryant and Assistant Chief LaShanna Potts accredited the uniform adjust in 2021.
The most modern graduates of the James G. Jackson Columbus Police Academy were being issued the new uniforms.
The uniform change arrives with no further price to the city, which offers officers with a established quantity of uniform parts and tools below the terms of its contract with the Fraternal Buy of Law enforcement.
Albert explained officers who wish to don their vest on the exterior of their uniform shirt will have to obtain the carrier for the vest them selves.
