Police Department to Purchase Six New Motorcycles
By Matthew Cannata | Sports Correspondent at December 12, 2023 | 9:30 am | Print
Last month, the New Britain Common Council voted to give permission to the New Britain Police Department to move forward with trading in three of their current motorcycles and purchasing six new Harley Davidsons, which will total $106,284. The funds that are being used to purchase the bikes comes from the Drug Asset Forfeiture Fund, which is a federal government initiative.
According to Chief James Wardwell, whenever New Britain officers are involved in the seizure of drugs, a large portion of the assets goes toward the federal government. The remaining funds are then split between the state and local agency.
This project has been in the works for several years but the department didn’t have the extra funds to commit to purchasing new motorcycles. Wardwell noted that the oldest bike they have is twelve years old and the other ones are on average, five years old. Due to the fact that these are police vehicles, they take more of a beating than a regular motorcycle would, which of course, shortens their life-span.
Wardwell said that the motorcycles will be used for a multitude of things. This includes police escorts for funerals, parades and traffic. In addition, he said we’ll see them used for community policing instead of officers driving around in cruisers. This is an effort by the police department to make officers more approachable and will also allow officers to patrol some areas of the city that are difficult to drive around, such as parks and other larger areas without much pavement to drive on.
Besides being used for all of that listed above, Wardwell believes that it will improve the police department and the safety of the city.
“This will allow the department to have even more professionalism. We pride ourselves on providing the most respectful escorts possible and our engagement with the community enhances that opportunity. In addition, the opportunity for more officers to become motor patrols will be available.”
The police department here in New Britain has been on the rise since Wardwell took over as interim chief in July of 2012 and then continued after he was officially sworn in on January 23, 2013. He expects this trend to continue moving into the future and believes that the new motorcycles are just one more step in the process to becoming the best police department that they could possibly be.
“This is all positive. We are re-building our department and re-defining ourselves. The purchasing of the motorcycles is just one more layer of taking something we’ve done well and working to improve on it. The future is bright.”
