Columbus Police To See New Squad, Body Cameras

(Columbus) The Columbus Police Department will be receiving new equipment in 2023. The department was able to purchase a new squad car because the police department was short staffed. City Administrator Kyle Ellefson explains.

“We were actually able to, because they had vacancies, we were actually able to buy a new squad car at the end of 2022,” Ellefson says. “We won’t see it for awhile yet because of the supply chains.”     

Ellefson says the city was able to take some of the money from salary savings and purchase the car. He says that it is a priority to keep the squads up-to-date and in rotation. That’s not the only new piece of equipment the department is getting though.

“There was an opportunity this year with body cam grants and we took advantage of that and took a big swing to make sure we were supporting our officers,” says Ellefson. “The city council was behind it a hundred percent, and I think this week is actually when we’re gonna have the servers and a lot of the technology coming together.”    The city administrator says he hopes to have the body cams and a training program rolled out in the next couple of weeks.