Patch work: Havre police get new uniform insignias

Havre Daily News/Lindsay Brown

The old Havre Police Department patch is seen to the left. To the right, the new patch features a redesigned emblem and fixes the misspelled Latin motto.

For Havre police officers, the side of their uniforms now match the sides of their cars.

The seal on the Havre Police Department's patch will fix some spelling errors and change the creature to make it "a little more coppish, " as Police Chief Kirk Fitch put it, to match the emblem used elsewhere.

The patch has been, for about 20 years, a reference to the seal of Le Havre, France, which was established in the early 1500s under King Francis I, who began France's global exploration.

Francis I represented himself with a salamander laying in a fire and surviving. At the time, people believed that, because a salamander was cold to the touch, it could survive a fire.

The image was usually joined by the Latin motto "Nutrisco et Extinguo, " which means "I nourish and extinguish, " meaning he supported things that were good and eliminated things that were bad.

The Havre Police Department patch that was used before this year's change had the misspelled motto "Nutricsoet extinguo. "

Now, aside from corrected spelling, the creature looks more like a fierce dragon and less like an orange snake climbing out of the mouth of a malnourished Dino from the Flintstones.