The Barrie Police Service has unveiled new colour patterned cruisers as part of a pilot project to evaluate their visibility in the community.
During a media conference on Tuesday morning, Chief Kimberley Greenwood said the initiative will take place for several months, and was funded through a provincial grant (Community Safety and Policing Grant).
"Our service is a learning service," Greenwood told Barrie 360. "We are committed to evidence-based policing ... we are looking to evaluate our presence in our community, and how trustworthy our community finds us."
The vehicles are ones taken from the regular fleet, that people see in the community already, just with new colouring added to them. Police say three cruisers with this colour pattern will take to the streets of Barrie throughout this initiative.
Barrie Police's Community Safety and Well-Being (CSWB) Team and their traffic unit will be using the vehicles.
The initiative is to measure police visibility and the half-Battenburg colouring stands out, and is quite different, from their traditional cruiser. The service says police visibility has the potential to reduce or prevent opportunities to commit crimes.
Similar coloured law enforcement vehicles can be found in other parts of the world, most notably the United Kingdom.
"We're looking to see the perception of our public on these vehicles," said Greenwood. "And it's part of our full evidence-based policing initiatives."
Data from the public, as well as officers, will be collected and processed to see if this colour palate will stay, and be applied to more Barrie Police vehicles.
Greenwood says the public's opinion regarding this initiative, and as a whole, is important as they evolve their policing.
"When we do any initiative for a project, we do evaluations throughout," said Greenwood. "The public consultation piece will be a very structured data collection through surveys ... we want to ensure that we work in a collaborative manner and we're addressing community safety, and wellbeing for all."
Images captured by Barrie 360
