White button-down shirts and eight-position hats? That’s soooo previous decade.
Officers and sergeants with the Columbus Division of Police will shortly be a very little more “style forward” when they patrol city streets and answer to phone calls for assistance.
Opting for comfort and ease over formality, the division is phasing out every day use of the white shirts and eight-place hats that have for a long time been staples. Officers will instead transition to wearing a navy blue, polyester-blend shirt with an optional matching blue baseball cap. The division’s navy blue trousers will continue to be the same.
The new uniform will be implemented across the division through the to start with fifty percent of 2022.
New Columbus police uniforms: Simpler treatment, simpler to have on
The new shirts will have an embroidered badge and the officer’s identify and badge amount embroidered on their shirts, the two of which really should be much more seen to citizens, Sgt. Joseph Albert claimed.
The new shirts will proceed to have a room for officers to have on their overall body cameras, and are designed to be extra comfy and functional for officers, Albert claimed.
For the exterior vests, which are now offered with the alter in shirts, there is a suspender-like wearable choice, enabling for a lot more equal pounds distribution and cutting down hip and reduced-back again pressure.
Bicycle, motorcycle and mounted unit officers will have reflective striping on the sleeves of their shirts as a safety evaluate, Albert explained.
The new shirts are also predicted to be much easier to retain clean and conceal dirt than the white shirts, Albert reported. The navy blue is identical to what is worn by Columbus firefighters.
Law enforcement will carry on to put on the white uniform shirts at formal situations, this sort of as promotions, ceremonies and funerals, and they will continue to be worn by some command team.
The new uniform structure course of action started in March 2019 with a survey in which practically 1,600 officers furnished input. Albert mentioned that a lot more than 90% of the officers who responded explained that they desired to be ready to don their bulletproof vests on the exterior of their uniform shirt, which is a lot less strenuous on officers’ hips and backs, as properly as currently being additional breathable, maintaining officers’ human body heat down.
Officers started testing new uniform variations soon immediately after the study in 2019, Albert said, and Main Elaine Bryant and Assistant Chief LaShanna Potts authorised the uniform improve in 2021.
The most current graduates of the James G. Jackson Columbus Police Academy were issued the new uniforms.
The uniform alter comes with no supplemental price to the city, which presents officers with a established number of uniform items and devices beneath the phrases of its contract with the Fraternal Buy of Police.
Albert said officers who wish to use their vest on the exterior of their uniform shirt will have to obtain the carrier for the vest them selves.
