Police to get $343-K armoured vehicle

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This article was published 09/12/2015 (3561 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

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The Winnipeg Police Service has purchased a $343,000 armoured personnel carrier to use in rescues, hostage negotiations and during the execution of high-risk search warrants, among other dangerous situations.

Within a matter of weeks, the police will take possession of a Gurkha people-mover, custom built by Terradyne Armoured Vehicles of Newmarket, Ont. The personnel carrier has ballistic panelling and gun ports, but isn’t equipped with weapons of its own.

While an armoured vehicle has sat on the police’s equipment wish list for more than a decade, Supt. Gord Perrier said a series of recent incidents — including the July 2015 Winnipeg mail-bombing and the Moncton shootings in 2014 — revived a push to acquire a vehicle capable of allowing the police’s tactical support team to operate more freely in situations where weapons are present.

“This vehicle allows those operations to occur in a prudent way,” Perrier said Wednesday at the Public Safety Building. “At the end of the day, we have had officers and members of the public that are put at great peril during those operations. Putting a monetary value on life is very difficult.”

Perrier said the police service considered buying a converted Canadian Armed Forces personnel carrier before deciding to go with a vehicle built by a civilian manufacturer. A tender was issued earlier this year, resulting in the selection of the Terradyne vehicle in October.

“We frankly did not want to have a converted vehicle from the military. That sends a message we’re really uncomfortable with,” Perrier said.

He said the Winnipeg police Gurkha will not have any fixed armaments, even if it may be used for tactical purposes when the appropriate situation arises.

Perrier said analyses of several incidents — including some officer-involved shootings now under independent investigation — found that police, suspects and civilians could have been protected better had the police had an armoured vehicle at their disposal.

Some incidents required the police to improvise through means such as placing bulletproof panels over glass, he said.

Maurice Sabourin, president of the Winnipeg Police Association, said it’s about time Winnipeg joins other Canadian cities in employing an armoured police vehicle.

“Winnipeg has a little big-town syndrome,” the union president said. “We don’t see ourselves as a very dangerous place, but it is very dangerous.”

Saskatoon, Vancouver, Ottawa, Windsor, Ont., and Montreal are among the cities where the police have armoured vehicles. Only Hamilton, whose police service purchased a Gurkha multi-purpose patrol vehicle from Terradyne in 2012, has a vehicle similar to the one coming to Winnipeg.

Terradyne sales manager Lucus Witzke said he couldn’t share many details of the Winnipeg police purchase, beyond the fact the vehicle is built specifically for law-enforcement use and is expected to last 15 to 20 years with proper maintenance.

Winnipeg police used money allocated for vehicle purchases in 2015 to buy the armoured personnel carrier. That fund was bolstered by the provincial sale of property seized from the proceeds of crime, Perrier said. An existing police tactical truck, which does not have bulletproof panels, will remain in use, he said.

While there was no mention of an armoured police vehicle in the 2015 capital budget — a document lists off almost every proposed police equipment purchase — the purchase did come before the Winnipeg Police Board in November, said St. James-Brooklands Coun. Scott Gillingham, who serves as the board’s chairman.

As a result, the board has asked police to disclose any future plans to purchase equipment worth $100,000 or more, Gillingham said.

There was far more advance disclosure — and several reports to council — before the police purchased a helicopter in 2010. Members of council, however, have so far offered no criticism of the minimal public disclosure of the Gurkha purchase.

Mayor Brian Bowman and council finance chairman Marty Morantz (Charleswood-Tuxedo) said it’s up to the police to determine what equipment they need, with police-board oversight.

“Operational decisions are not politicized for a reason,” Bowman said. “I’m not an expert on armoured police vehicles.”

Kevin Walby, associate professor of criminal justice at the University of Winnipeg, said Winnipeggers should be concerned about the lack of public consultation around the armoured-vehicle purchase, which he said runs counter to Winnipeg’s community policing strategies.

Walby said U.S. research suggests the increasing police use of military-style equipment leads to more violent police tactics and public mistrust of police.

“It’s not just that it creates more aggressive encounters; it does, but I think more damaging is the lack of trust that it’s going to foster. It’s going to drive a bigger wedge between the community and the police the more they become militarized,” Walby said.

“That’s a big problem for police because they need buy-in from the public, and they’re not going to get it if they’re going around scaring people in these military vehicles.”

Perrier countered the new police vehicle will be not be placed on patrol. “The primary use of the vehicle is to move people for life-saving efforts,” he said. “We guarantee we will not be placing armaments fixed on this vehicle.”

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