The Mayor's office announced today that they'll be giving the NYPD $17.3 million to upgrade the department's bulletproof vests, as promised back in January.
Many police officers have been wearing outdated vests for some time, with the most recent update dating all the way back to 2006. Last month, City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito pledged to provide cops with thousands of new vests, and today Mayor de Blasio confirmed 13,000 will be upgraded.
"The hardworking men and women who make up the NYPD put their lives on the line each day to protect our city’s residents—and we owe these officers every possible protection as they patrol our city’s streets," the Mayor said in a statement. "This administration is fully committed to ensuring the safety of our city’s officers, and that means making sure all our bulletproof vests are in working order. We are allocating funds to this fiscal year so we can start buying vests immediately, providing our brothers and sisters in blue with life-saving protection right away."
The new vest announcement comes nearly two months after police officers Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu were shot to death while sitting in their squad car in Bedford-Stuyvesant, instigating a period of marked tension between the Mayor and the NYPD.
