St. Petersburg, Florida -- Does the color of a police officer's uniform make a difference? The new chief at St. Pete PD seems to think so.
And now, Anthony Holloway is about to spend hundreds of thousands of tax-payer dollars to switch from the department's current green uniforms back to blue.
"People are saying it's going to be kind of military," said Jamal Scott, a local resident.
There is both concern and skepticism surrounding the chief's plan to re-outfit the majority of his 550 member force by January.
To do it, the city has budgeted $281,000. More than twice the normal amount of money spent on uniforms.
'That's money--that could be used for something else," said life-long resident Betty Armstrong.
The department says the changes are long overdue. The darker color is safer--they say--giving officers better cover at night.
And the reason they even went green some 60 years ago actually had nothing to do with policing.
"It's a uniform that we went to back in the 1950s because our then-chief Bud Purdy was a great fan of the Michigan State Spartans," said Assistant Chief Melanie Bevan, "liked their uniforms, and said I'm going to put my cops in those uniforms."
In case you didn't know it, the Spartans wear green.
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The Department says the blue uniforms match more local police departments, and will improve community policing efforts.
But Kurt Donley, a recent Public Safety Chairman for St. Pete's NAACP chapter, doubts it.
Donley cites a 2001 FBI study which he calls "the standard" for the topic. which found darker uniforms can have a negative impact. intimidating some of the very parts of the population the department claims it's trying to reach out to. And in some cases making people feel more hostile.
"And the end result is most people find the darker uniforms to be off-putting," said Donley.
"It's not the uniform," said Assistant Chief Bevan, "it's the people that put them on every day."
The department says in the long run it also makes financial sense to switch from green to blue.
There are so few companies making green uniforms anymore they say, that they are usually far more expensive. And the uniforms, they say, often don't hold up as well.
