The city of Moncton has issued its fire inspectors bulletproof vests in an effort to keep firefighters safe in all circumstances.
“Currently here in Moncton, there are four vests that are issued to fire investigation officers.” said Moncton Fire investigation division chief, Charles Leblanc
Bulletproof vests are usually reserved for police officers and special weapons units, but more and more firefighters are donning the protection.
“Sometimes the air gets pretty hot, and our officers do get threatened (by people),” Leblanc said.
Leblanc has seen his share of altercations – as a former police officer it was a regular occurrence – but acting on behalf of the fire marshal it’s not something he expects.
“We do inspections of our night clubs for compliance purposes,” Leblanc added. “We had an occasion here two years ago, where two of our officers unwittingly got involved in a fist fight, basically they just thought we looked like police officers.”
Moncton is one of the only cities in the province to provide these types of vests to inspection officers, at a cost of roughly $1,500 per vest. Leblanc said he thinks it may be something other communities will start to consider.
“Typically in Canada, firefighters are liked by everybody, but it is a changing world, recently we had a court case where we were threatened against bodily harm and death,” he said. “When you put those factors together, for us it was a simple solution to go with ballistic style vests for the protection of our officers.”