The City of Repentigny has announced a six-month pilot project to equip its police department with electric vehicles.
The project is being implemented by Cyberkar, a Quebec-based company specializing in high-end technology solutions for emergency vehicles.
According to Jonathan Boivin, business development manager at Cyberkar, this is the first time an electric patrol car will be entirely designed and manufactured in Quebec.
The project, which includes equipping a Ford Mustang with a battery with a range of 300 km, will begin at the end of April.
City officials hope to rebrand the police force, whose reputation has been tarnished by allegations of racial profiling in recent months. Tensions were heightened by the August death of a Black resident, Jean-René Junior Olivier.
The 37-year-old man was shot outside his family’s home after his mother, who wanted her son taken to the hospital for psychiatric care, called 911 .
Stéphanie Fortier, an organizational performance advisor with the City of Repentigny, says this project is one of many steps the municipality is taking to improve its relationship with citizens.
“The impact of a visual identity, in terms of relations with citizens, can make a difference," she said, adding that studies in Europe have shown that people’s perception of the police can be improved by changing their visual identity.
Fortier says the city plans to share the vehicle with other police forces in Quebec.
“In an ideal world, the interest will be high enough to reduce the cost of the transformation through the economy of scale generated by the purchase of several vehicles," she said.
— This article was first reported in French by The Canadian Press on Feb. 12, 2022.
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