The Detroit Police Department has put 15 new patrol vehicles into service from a donation from the local business community providing 100 new cruisers to patrol officers.
The city unveiled the new Chevrolet Caprices, Dodge Chargers, and Ford Police Interceptor sedans Thursday during a downtown parade. The city also showed off 10 new ambulances. In all, the city will receive 123 new emergency vehicles as part of the $8 million donation.
City officials said the additional 85 patrol cars will be rolled out as they are equipped. The city acquired the new patrol cars from area Chrysler, Ford, and General Motors dealerships. Each vehicle, after upfitting, cost between $40,000 and $50,000, according to a city release.
The new vehicles were kept at an undisclosed location, where WXYZ provided an exclusive look at them earlier this month.
The city is using the funds to replace its entire fleet of 23 EMS ambulances at a cost of $161,000 per vehicle. The EMS units are built on International’s TerraStar chassis by Horton Ambulance.
The companies that donated funds for the vehicles include Penske Corporation; Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan; Chrysler Group, LLC; Ford Motor Company; General Motors Company; Quicken Loans, Inc.; The Kresge Foundation; Platinum Equity, LLC; and Shinola. The City stated that these companies worked with the Downtown Detroit Partnership as part of this program. FirstMerit Bank acted as the financial partner in this project.