Palm Springs purchasing new SWAT vehicle
After a unanimous vote by the Palm Springs City Council on Wednesday night the city will be buying a big piece of equipment for its Police Department.
It’s called a Ballistic Engineered Armored Response vehicle or BEAR for short.
Currently there is one smaller, older SWAT vehicle called a BEARCAT which is shared by SWAT teams in Palm Springs, Cathedral City and Indio.
The new $513,600 truck would be for the city of Palm Springs alone.
“The BEAR is a bigger version of what we have and it can hold much more people. Up to 21 people officers or people we are rescuing,” said Palm Springs Police Chief Bryan Reyes.
Chairman of the Palm Springs International Film Festival, Harold Matzner, donated a grant of more than $250,000 to pay for half of the BEAR.
Matzner said this truck is necessary to protect people during large events like the film festival.
“We are now providing more than 300 security officers and six armored vehicles and we are borrowing those vehicles from other cities. Given who we are as a city and given our brand we should have our own,” Matzner said.
Not everyone at the meeting was on board with the city spending that kind of cash on an armored vehicle.
“I am adamantly opposed to this and I feel that the majority of the people of Palm Springs would be opposed to this as well. With our high crime rate and this cost for a militarized vehicle that will only be used, if at all, only once in a great while,” said Patrick Weiss a resident of Palm Springs who spoke during public comment.
In SWAT team situations, like the shooting deaths of Palm Springs Officers Jose “Gil” Vega and Lesley Zerebny, minutes matter. It took a long time for the one shared SWAT vehicle to make it to the scene.
“That thing had to respond from Indio to Palm Springs on Oct. 8th when we lost our officers,” Reyes said.
“I can’t help wondering, if we had a vehicle like this or this vehicle more readily available rather than have to wait for it to come to from the other end of the valley, if it would have made a difference on one of the worst days in our history,” said Councilmember J.R. Roberts.
According to City Manager David Ready, the $256,800 the city will pay for its half of the BEAR will come from the General Fund originally and be moved into the Motor Vehicle Fund so the city will still have a budget to replace other older vehicles.
It will take six to eight months for the BEAR to be custom built by Lenco Armored Vehicles.
