(Photo by Reilly Dixon)
Yellow Springs Police get new cruiser, cameras
- Published: February 23, 2026
At the group’s most recent meeting, Tuesday, Feb. 17, Village Council members approved a resolution to authorize Village Manager Johnnie Burns to purchase a new police cruiser — a 2026 Police Interceptor Utility Hybrid — for $67,576.
The purchase was expected; Council had appropriated $80,000 in the 2026 budget for this purpose, answering Chief Burge’s insistence last year that the police department was long overdue for a new cruiser to replace one of several aging fleet vehicles.
Of YSPD’s six total automobiles, two are entirely non-operational — a police cruiser and the community outreach specialists’ vehicle. The forthcoming new vehicle will bring the department’s operational fleet of police cruisers to four.
The purchase also gets the Village back on track with a prior two-to-three-year replacement schedule.
At a 2026 budget-related meeting last fall, when Chief Burge petitioned Council to include new cruiser money in the year’s municipal expenses, she said that a 2023 Council decision to forego purchasing a new cruiser set into motion a series of costly consequences for the local department.
“It had a tremendous domino effect,” Chief Burge said of the 2023 decision. “The delayed replacement has caused additional maintenance costs on our vehicles — amounting to about a third of what it would have cost to buy a new vehicle.”
She added: “I can’t stress enough how important it is to get back to our rotation. If I’m being completely realistic, we should have put in [YSPD’s 2026 budget requests] for two cars. But I understand that’s not feasible. You’ll be seeing me come back to Council next year for that second replacement.”
Burns said as much at Tuesday’s meeting — that his ideal fleet is five functioning cruisers. He said he also hopes to integrate all-electric vehicles into the local fleet, but for now, the Bryan Center’s infrastructure can’t accommodate that goal.
More closely on the horizon for YSPD are new body-worn and dash cameras; officers have been getting trained on the new technology all this week.
As the News reported earlier this year, one of Council’s last pieces of legislation of 2025 was the authorization of Burns to enter into a contract with Axon Enterprise, Inc. to upgrade YSPD’s previous cameras that he and Chief Burge said had the potential to malfunction and pose bodily harm to an officer.
The new cameras from Axon — a Scottsdale, Arizona-based company that manufactures weapons and technology products for military, law enforcement and civilian use — will cost the Village $18,252 annually, or about $2,000 more than the Village’s previous contract with Digital Ally.
In other body camera-related news, YSPD was awarded a $32,111 grant through the Ohio Office of Criminal Justice Services. According to Burns’ manager’s report, delivered at the Tuesday Council meeting, those funds will be used to “sustain and support” the body-worn camera “program” in Yellow Springs through 2027.
Presently, the local police department is composed of 16 individuals: Chief Burge, four dispatchers, one dispatch supervisor, a sergeant, a property room manager, five full-time officers, one part-time officer, and two community outreach specialists/victim advocates. Without two additional officers, the department is not considered fully staffed.
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