Snow induced emergency response needs have the Madisonville Police Department gassing up its fleet of surplus military equipment. Chief Wade Williams said the department has 4 unarmored utility hummers to be used in adverse conditions like these. He said both police and emergency responders are using the vehicles for residential calls.
“Someone may be out of a critical medicine or oxygen, or someone that’s home-ridden. From that end all the way over to we’ve had several large scale accidents involving semis and trying to get people into shelter that were stuck on the roadway. Normal vehicles wouldn’t travel in a lot of this,” Williams said.
He says the hummers are unarmored and usually only rolled out during extreme weather, but are also used in drug enforcement.
“Unfortunately we have a methamphetamine issue here in Kentucky and sometimes those labs are ad-hoc, off road, in some desolate area that we need some of these vehicles to get to,” Williams said.
Williams said M-P-D acquired the vehicles at no cost about 3 years ago from the U.S. Department of Defense. Only one of the hummers is used on a regular basis for children’s programs, parades, and charitable events like “cram the cruiser.”
