What was old is new again for the Dalton Police Department. The department will change its shoulder patch logo on New Year’s Day to a new design that was inspired by an older patch worn by the department in the 1970s.
“It’s just a matter of freshening things up a bit,” said Assistant Chief Chris Crossen. “We’ve been wearing the current patch for close to 20 years and Chief (Cliff) Cason was looking (at different designs) and really liked the nostalgia of one of the older patches that the police department used to wear so we took that as our guide.”
The department’s current patch logo features an illustration of a brightly colored landscape with a train traveling on a set of train tracks. Before the department adopted that logo in the early 2000s, Dalton officers wore a patch logo that featured the city of Dalton’s “carpet roll” logo. But in the early 1970s, the department’s uniforms featured a simpler design in the shape of a shield with the image of a train in the middle. The city has been known as the Carpet Capital of the World for many decades, but the community’s history as a railroad hub for shipping and transportation is rooted even more deeply in its history. A train adorns the city seal in the council chambers at City Hall.
“One of our retired captains, Howard Walthour, provided one of the old patches that he had and we decided to use that as the template for what we wanted to go back to,” said Cason. “It was refreshed just a little bit. The top rocker panel on it was boiled down to just saying ‘police’ instead of ‘City of Dalton Police’ like the previous version, but for those older city employees that remember the old patch it just provides that blast from the past of what we previously had.”
“(Chief Cason) liked the design, he liked the shape, it’s a little smaller than our current patch. So he wanted to stay with that as kind of the base and from there we just worked with the patch maker and cleaned it up just a little bit and made it our own,” Crossen said. “The patch that we’re currently using has a much brighter set of colors, the golds and greens, and this one is a lot simpler and a lot more toned down on the colors.”
“It’s one of those things where I felt the previous patch that we had didn’t really reflect the history of the Dalton Police Department and who we are at this point in time,” Cason said. “I thought it was good to reflect the historic patch of the police department with the train as we are a major railway hub and we were a major railway hub even before we were a major carpet (and flooring manufacturing) hub.”
While most of the uniforms of police departments often look similar to each other, the patch logo is a way to distinguish agencies with details or designs that pay homage to the communities they serve. Some police departments around the country have elaborate logos with unique designs and others are more subdued. They can be popular collector’s items among police officers who sometimes trade patches with other officers when they meet at training conferences.
“Kind of like a sports team, they have a logo and that’s kind of the police department’s logo. It will incorporate some aspects of the city,” Crossen said. “There are definitely a lot of collectors out there of patches, people who try to put together patches from every city in the state of Georgia … you’ll see them, there are actually shows where people trade and buy and sell them.”
Uniforms featuring the new patches will go into use starting Jan. 1. The department is announcing the change in advance so the public will recognize the new look.
“For people who pay attention to the shoulder patches on the uniforms, these new patches are what will take over on January the first,” Crossen said. “Everyone’s gotten their uniforms and swapped patches out from (the) previous (version) … it may take just a little while, you may see jackets and things like that that don’t have patches on them until we can get those transitioned over. But yes, if you see something that looks just a little different, you may not be able to put your finger on it, but yes, these will be the correct patch.”