Terradyne Gurkha armored rescue vehicle joins the Yukon police fleet

Yukon is part of an Oklahoma City-area metropolitan region of nearly 1.5 million people, and Yukon police officers routinely respond to and alongside Oklahoma City, Canadian County, El Reno, and Mustang — so the equipment officers need follows the calls they answer, not the population inside Yukon's own city limits. The City Council approved a Terradyne Gurkha MPV tactical armored vehicle for the Yukon Police Department on September 4, 2024, at a cost of $344,945. The same council action also approved a FLIR Skywatch mobile surveillance tower; the two together were financed at $621,883.92 over five years through the Police P.E.S.T. Fund, not the general fund. Built on a Ford F-450 chassis with a 17,000-lb winch and door ram, the vehicle exists to retrieve people from danger, not to project force. On March 28, 2021 in Norman, an active shooter pinned down three residents and five officers for more than an hour; the Norman Police Department's own release states that 'multiple armored vehicles were deployed to safely remove the residents and officers from danger,' and that the rescue 'took more than one hour to complete.' The Cleveland County Sheriff's Office cited that same incident in May 2022 when announcing its own armored rescue vehicle.

What it means: Equipment built to get pinned-down officers and residents out of danger, matched to a metro area of nearly 1.5 million people