Fort Oglethorpe buys fire radios, retires police weapons
Fort Oglethorpe’s City Council purchased new equipment for its fire department and relinquished some from its police department during its April 8 meeting.
The board unanimously approved purchased three mobile radios to go with new fire vehicles and retired two firearms in honor of the officers who carried them for years.
Fire Chief Bruce Ballew presented a bid recommendation for the new radios.
“I come before you tonight to request the purchase of three radios for the new vehicles that you’ve already purchased and are slowly coming in,” Chief Ballew said.
“This will be from Motorola Solutions for three APX 4500 megahertz radios for a total of $10,702.20 to be purchased with SPLOST (Special Purpose, Local Option Sales Tax) funds.”
The three new vehicles, two Dodge Durango SUVS and a Dodge Ram truck, were approved by the board in February at a cost of $98,961.30
As far as the weapons go, Police Chief Mike Helton explained that it is customary for agencies to retire weapons with the officers who toted them on duty.
“I have two in this category to discuss with you and recommend. One is a firearm that was carried by one of our retirees, Mitchell Moore,” Helton said. “He served the city for 16 years and was shot in the line of duty. That first firearm would be a Glock 22. We recommend that this weapon be provided to him in recognition of his service.”
The second weapon belonged to Allen Gilbert.
“He (Gilbert) served us for 10 years and provided the city excellent service during that time frame, so we’d like to recommend that firearm be retired also and provided to him in recognition of his service.”