Town police cars are slowly changing colors

By Mike Morell

Published: April 22, 2008

There is a saying that the camel is a horse designed by a committee.

But the Amherst Town Police Department may be an exception to that less-than-flattering adage when it comes to giving the department’s cars a new look.

When Officer Greg Harler received his new car last October it came with a paint job different than any of the department’s other cars.

Rather than a straight blue-over-yellow stripe broken with the circular town seal on the front door and “Amherst” in blue and “Police” in black on the back door, the new car has the town police shoulder patch emblem on the back door and wavy red and blue stripes along the sides.
The wording, “Amherst” in red and “Police” in blue also reflected the striping.

“We all had a hand in this design,” Police Chief Kenneth Watts said. “Every officer suggested something or made some sort of contribution to the project.”

Watts said that the old design had been in use since 1994.

“I came up with the idea of putting the shoulder patch on the side rather than just the town seal,” Harler said. “The other officers came up with the color scheme and other design ideas.”
Officer Ben Placer coordinated the project with Auto Trim Design of Lynchburg to come up with the final design, Watts said.

“My only contribution was to give final approval to the design,” Watts said. “We will have a second car in service with the new design in 2010.”

He said the department replaces cars on an age and mileage basis. They also factor in the amount of maintenance needed.

“We generally expect to get seven or eight years of service out of a car,” he said. “So it will be a while before they all look alike again.

Paint designs for police cars have changed over the years, Watts said, a lot like advertising; the purpose of the design is to draw attention to the cars.

“It also doesn’t cost any extra to make the change rather than continuing with the old design,” he said. “The companies that do the painting usually work with the department to create the design. It costs as much to paint on one design as it does another.”

Watts said the only future design change he may be looking at is eliminating the light bar on top of the cars.

“A lot of departments are going with what are called slick top cars,” he said. “With the type of lighting technology available today, we can still identify ourselves a police without a bar on top of the car.”
The advantage, he said, is a saving of $700 to $2,000 on the cost of the bar.