The Sarnia Police Service has an urgent need for new cruisers, according to its finance director.
Cathy Dam made the comment during Thursday's police board meeting while the service was discussing ways to get itself back in sync with a regular cyclical vehicle replacement.
Chief Derek Davis said current wait times for new cruisers can be seven, even eight months long.
"We're hoping that improves as we get further and further away from the COVID period [when] the supply chain catches back up again, but right now we need to order months and months in advance, so that's why the planning is so important," said Davis. "We can't wait until there's a crisis, we need to start planning now how we're going to make sure that we have sufficient vehicles to be able to do our core business, which is emergency response."
Manager of Planning Jason Dale said wait times and the cost of new vehicles have both nearly doubled in recent years, with the cost of a new cruiser and its equipment being upwards of $100,000.
Chief Davis said the reality is, the service has a few new vehicles and they also have some very old ones.
"Our concern right now is if all of the old ones were to have a mechanical failure or where they're not available for service, they're in for repair, that's going to impact our operational abilities and we want to prevent that," said Davis. "The goal would be to have like a standard budget every year of vehicle replacement, versus buying a whole bunch in year one and then none in year two."
The service currently has around 16 cruisers on the front line, including Dodge Chargers and around five Chevrolet Tahoes.
Davis said they're looking at investing in Ford F150 pickup trucks because they're cheaper than SUVs and the Dodge Charger is being discontinued.
"In our case, it gives us a lot of advantages in terms of the ability to reuse the insularly equipment and reliability in winter, and the truck gives us some capabilities," said Davis. "So it gives us the ability to have a few more utility uses that we didn't have with, say, a Dodge Charger."
Davis said because the F150 model has stayed relatively the same over the years, it would allow the service to reuse more equipment in the truck once the vehicle becomes worn out.
The only pursuit rated police vehicles on the market right now are the Chevrolet Tahoe and Silverado, the Dodge Durango, and the Ford Explorer and F150.
During Thursday's meeting, the board approved the purchase of two new police vehicles with $200,000 from the reserve budget. It comes after two relatively new cruisers were recently destroyed in the line of duty.
