San Gabriel Valley : ARMORED

It’s big. It’s bad. It’s bulletproof. And it’s going to Arcadia.

Armored Transport of California has donated an old armored vehicle to the Arcadia Police Department SWAT team, said John Cassotta, vice president of corporate security for the company.

Arcadia joins 86 other police departments throughout the West that have been granted 23,000 bulletproof trucks by Armored Transport since 1984.

“It’s saved officers’ lives in difficult situations,” Cassotta said. And “it’s something good for the community that they [the police] can’t afford.” A new truck costs $50,000.

The donated trucks still run, but are no longer of use to the company, Cassotta said. If it hadn’t been donated, the vehicle would have “been cut up. We destroy them because we don’t want them to fall in the wrong hands.”