BANGOR – If you live, work, visit or shop in Bangor, you may have already noticed something different about the city’s police cruisers. Well, two things different.

Several of the city’s police vehicles are already sporting a new municipal logo as well as new colors, specifically black and white, once considered the hallmark colors of police cars. Remember the television show Adam-12?

To date, four police vehicles – three cars and one SUV – bear the new logo and color scheme while the remaining seven marked cruisers are scheduled for the changeover during the next six to eight weeks, said Police Chief Donald Winslow recently.

Paid for by drug-forfeiture money, the paint job has the front and rear fenders, trunk and hood in black while the two side doors and roof are white.

In making the color-scheme change, Bangor is returning to colors it used decades ago and is following the example of a number of other police departments. Brewer beat Bangor to the punch, making the switch in 1998.

“If you look at trends now, more and more departments are going back to the traditional black and white cruisers,” Winslow said.

The idea behind the black and whites is that they are easier to distinguish from other vehicles used by private businesses and security companies.

Winslow also thinks the increased visibility of the cruisers may prove a better deterrent for speeding motorists and for criminals.Winslow said the idea of returning to black and white cruisers had been talked about for years, but never really pursued. It seemed to fit in, however, with the city’s plan to revamp its logo, to be seen on municipal vehicles from police cars to plow trucks.

The new logo features the city’s name in green, representing pine trees above a blue symbol representing the Penobscot River and is intended to help unify the city, said Joanne Gula, community information and marketing coordinator with the city’s department of Community and Intergovernmental Affairs.

“We wanted to bring it all together, one look, one marketing effort, one city,” she said. For the police department, it will also mean a uniform look on the cruisers, which for years have had different color schemes.