In an effort to prevent tragedies like the one last December – which took the lives of two officers in Brooklyn — a NYC Councilman has introduced a new measure.
The bill proposed Wednesday by Jumaane Williams (D-Brooklyn) would require the NYPD to put bullet-proof glass in all of its patrol cars.
Williams said he’s hoping this will help prevent deaths like that of officers Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos. The two were ambushed and killed sitting in their police car, while on patrol near violence-plagued housing projects.
Williams told POLITICO New York, “We want to move the conversation forward because we want the men and women of the NYPD to make sure they feel protected when they are doing their jobs.”
Republican state legislators introduced a similar measure last year to “retrofit both state police and NYPD cars” with bulletproof glass. But Williams said his bill would only apply to NYPD vehicles. He said he was aware the costs to retrofit them could be high, the Daily News reported.
“We want to look into how cost-prohibitive it actually is. This is only the beginning of the conversation,” he said. “We know now that there might be some, not just budgetary but some practical issues, with putting in bullet proof glass that we have to contend with,” Williams said.
Politico reported that the proposal may get a “tepid reaction” from the city’s police commissioner, who said last year, shortly after the officers’ deaths, that outfitting NYPD cars with bulletproof glass was not a “practical idea.”
Police Commissioner Bill Bratton objected to the statewide measure, saying it would cost $50,000 per car and “might make it harder for cops to escape their cars by breaking glass in an emergency.”
