NATCHEZ — The Adams County Sheriff’s Office has purchased a new 4-wheel drive SUV for what Sheriff Chuck Mayfield characterized as a winter test program.

The $32,000 Toyota SUV purchased by local bid was purchased from Trace City Toyota and has a winch on the front.

Mayfield said the vehicle was bought in hindsight after last winter’s atypically severe weather, during which the ACSO’s patrol vehicles could respond to incidents but couldn’t help even each other if they slid off the road.

“It is going to be for when we have storms. We were kind of paralyzed when we had the snow,” Mayfield said. “We didn’t have anything to send out when our vehicles got stuck, so we decided we needed to go to something that we could have at least one vehicle that could go out there.”

The sheriff said the SUV was outfitted with equipment from old vehicles, and with the exception of some of its lighting system was financed by the auction of vehicles that had been wrecked or were no longer being used by the ACSO.

County Administrator Joe Murray said insurance money associated with the wrecked vehicles was also used in the purchase, which was approved by the county board of supervisors in December.

Mayfield said that while he has driven the vehicle some since it became part of the ACSO inventory, it is not his assigned vehicle.

The sheriff  said his vehicle remains one of the department’s law enforcement outfitted Dodge Chargers.

The Dodge Durango SUVs assigned to deputies have a higher center of gravity and can go over worse roads than other law enforcement vehicles, but are two-wheel drive and can’t be relied on to pull another vehicle out of a ditch or move a tree blocking the road, Mayfield said.

No one has been assigned a new vehicle following the purchase of the SUV, he said.

“This is not going to be a regular patrol vehicle,” he said.  “We are testing it out this year, and so if we have a big storm event, whoever is shift superintendent will probably be driving that vehicle.”

The vehicle was not purchased on a state law enforcement contract because the kind of vehicle the ACSO was looking for was not available on the contract, Mayfield said.

“I am not hoping for a storm, but if we get one we are going to take the experience we get from this (vehicle) and see what we have learned,” he said.