Lawmakers Push to Install Bulletproof Glass on All Police Cars

Several state lawmakers said Monday that they will introduce legislation requiring all police vehicles in the state to be outfitted with bulletproof glass.

The move comes in the wake of the fatal shooting of NYPD officers Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos, who were ambushed as they sat in their patrol car in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn Saturday afternoon.

The legislation, which is being drafted, would install bulletproof glass in police cars over a phased-in period, starting with the NYPD.

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“If it is good enough for high-ranking government officials and dignitaries to ride around in cars with bulletproof glass, then it should be for our cops who put their lives on the line and are being tracked down and murdered like prey,” Assemb. Jim Tedisco, R-Glenville, said in a statement. “We are proposing state legislation to begin to retrofit all law enforcement vehicles in New York State with the best protective bullet proof glass for all windows.”

Tedisco, along with fellow Assemb. Nicole Malliotakis, R-Brooklyn-Staten Island, and state senators Phil Boyle, R-Suffolk County and Marty Golden, R-Brooklyn, plan to introduce the legislation, and they called for part of the state’s $5.1 billion to be used to pay for the initiative.

“We cannot put a price on protecting the men and women who put their lives on the line each and every day to protect us,” Boyle said. “When our police officers are safer, we are all safer.”

Photo/Flickr/Creative Commons/Global Jet