SHOT BLOCKER

Bratt: We’re testing armorplated cop cars

WELCOME to the future of the NYPD squad car — Bratt-mobiles with bulletproof panels.

City cops are testing armored panels in about 50 cars. The LAPD has used similar safety upgrades for years.

“The officers can stand behind them to further protect them when they encounter danger on the street,” Police Commissioner Bill Bratton said Wednesday during his State of the NYPD address at a Police Foundation breakfast.

Bullet-resistant glass is also being tested, Bratton said, though he suspects that after officers provide feedback, the panels will be better received while the glass will require more study. There were calls for bulletproof glass in police cars after the murder in December 2014 of Officers Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos in Brooklyn.

Bratton at the time raised concerns about the cost — $50,000 per car — and suggested strengthening car doors as an alternative. It wasn’t immediately clear how much it will cost to upgrade the cars, though the Police Foundation, a nonprofit, often pays for security enhancements for cops, including police vests.

The vendor, Hardwire Armor Systems, based in Maryland, could not be reached for comment.

“We’re very interested in anything that even in the modicum improves the safety of our officers,” Bratton said. “We want to take a look at it if we can.”

Bratton discussed other innovative initiatives during his speech.

The city’s top cop said smartphones being provided to every police officer feature an app to help overcome translation gaps by letting a foreign-language speaker talk into the phone.

“The phone will translate for the officer (in) audio, and in writing, what the question is,” Bratton said. “The officer will be able to speak back into the phone and translate for the questioner an answer.”

Bratton also revealed that a continued drop in police stops, ar- rests and summonses has produced enough of a decrease in complaints against cops that he was able to move 200 investigators out of the Internal Affairs Bureau.

Those officers have been reassigned to an expanding pilot program in which cops work closely with the local community.

Bratton noted the benefits of what he called “precision policing.”

Last year, he said, field intelligence officers recovered 998 guns just by quizzing people who were arrested about other crimes they were aware of. The effort coughed up almost 200 more guns than the 819 seized from 686,000 street stops that police made in 2011. The number of stop-and-frisks plummeted to just 18,351 in the fi first three quarters of 2015.

“In other words,” he said, “one unit practicing precision policing got more guns by talking to people than came from nearly 700,000 street stops.”