Many of the recent changes at the Powell Police Department have taken place “under the hood,” but some much more visible ones are on the way.

With the blessing of the Powell City Council, the department is adopting a new patch for its uniforms and switching to a new black-based paint scheme for its squad cars.

In remarks to the council last week, Powell Police Chief Jim Rhea described the updates as being a part of the department’s efforts to bolster its professionalism. In the months since he took over as chief, “we have significantly raised the bar, department wide, to improve our service and community relations, which is what the citizens of Powell deserve,” Rhea reported.

He said the new uniform patch and vehicle decals are a way to “showcase our pride in Powell’s culture and heritage.”

Most of the city’s patrol vehicles feature a white paint job, but as they wear out, their replacements will feature black paint and a new design. Although Rhea is looking forward to a day when the department’s fleet has a standardized look, the vehicles will be a mix of styles — including some dark blue trucks — until all the old models are rotated out.

The new design also features a grayscale graphic on the rear side windows that depicts Heart Mountain inset over an American flag.

“We have a lot of veterans, a lot of patriotic people in this community, and especially in the police department, and that work for the city,” Rhea said, “and that [graphic] was a fun way to showcase that.”

While the font is changing, the text “Powell Police” will continue to be prominently displayed on both sides and the back of the vehicle.

There were suggestions to just feature the department’s patch, but “I didn’t like that idea, as it wasn’t readily identifiable,” Rhea said, “especially if we’re having to block off streets, and from a long distance away, you couldn’t read that it was a police vehicle.”

The department’s decades-old patch has also undergone a makeover.

The prior design included a blue and red color scheme with a thin outline of Heart Mountain and a star, loosely following the city’s logo. The new patch features a more detailed rendering of Heart Mountain in dark shades of blue. The rendering of the local mountain was designed by graphic artist Jeremiah Howe and matches the city’s new downtown mural. (Howe, who also designed the new window decals, donated his time to the city.)

One motivation for the uniform revamp, Rhea said, is that the American flag attached to the right shoulder of the officers’ current uniforms is arguably backwards and “out of regulation.” 

The department has been displaying the flag with the union — the blue rectangle containing the 50 stars — toward the officer’s back. However, military and most modern police standards call for Old Glory to be reversed on the right shoulder so that, as the U.S. Army puts it, the flag appears to be “flying in the breeze as the wearer moves forward.”

Purchasing and sewing the new patches, service stripes, sergeant’s chevrons and flags onto the officers’ uniforms will cost a total of about $1,800, Rhea said.

He added that it made sense to make a change while the department is shorthanded, as there are fewer uniforms to alter. However, that should change soon, as the chief expects to be back at full staff by the end of the month.

Meanwhile, the first vehicles featuring the new black paint job and graphics are set to hit the city’s streets around late January.