New look coming for Elyria police cruisers

The Elyria Police Department's fleet is fully uniform for the first time in at least eight years, and the department is planning to give all its cruisers a new design in the near future. During a meeting of City Council's Finance Committee on Monday, Safety Service Director Chris Pyanowski presented legislation allowing him to sell several Chevrolet Tahoes that the department had been using. The committee approved the legislation and it will go before Council as a whole for approval. Police Chief James Welsh said Thursday that the Tahoes had been replaced by newer Ford Police Interceptor Units, which are based on the civilian Ford Explorer model. Welsh said that the department began purchasing Interceptors in 2017, and with the disposal of the Tahoes the department had finally finished switching over its fleet. During the committee meeting on Monday, Councilwoman Mary Siwierka, D-3rd Ward, proposed that Elyria update its police vehicle designs to make them more visible. "I think that we should be marking the vehicles more prominently than we have them marked right now," she said. "I know that right now they just have some simple vinyl on them, and perhaps we could get that upped a little bit." Pyanowski said at the meeting that the department was actually already looking at making updates to its vehicle designs. On Thursday, Welsh said that the department was looking into new, more prominent graphics to replace its current cruiser designs; jet black cars with a few small decals and lettering. Welsh said that the new cruiser designs would be a classic white and black combination with more prominent logos and text marking it as Elyria. "People should know who we are," Welsh said. "I want the cruisers to look classic, professional and just help build our brand, essentially." Welsh said that the cruisers would not be too obvious so they could still be used to sneak up on suspects when necessary, but they would be much more recognizable to residents. "It serves a purpose sometimes, not having our vehicles be overly recognizable so we can more or less sneak up on people, especially during drug investigations and things like that. But generally, our cars could be spruced up a bit, for lack of a better word. And I am definitely looking at designs to make them more professional and more visible so people can recognize them as an Elyria police vehicle." Welsh said he was trying to be "budget conscious" because money spent on vehicle wraps could not be spent on other equipment, but he felt the better image and uniformity would be worth the cost. The designs the city is currently looking at cost between $500 and $800 per cruiser, Welsh said. Contact Owen MacMillan at (440) 329-7123 or omacmillan@chroniclet.com.