The city of Elmhurst recently ordered some protective disposable face masks, but not for swine flu purposes.

Elmhurst Police Chief Steve Neubauer said the city “wanted to make sure we kept our stock up. We use them from time to time in the normal police line of work, and we had heard that there was a worldwide rush on these.”

Neubauer said that it’s important to keep the stock up on face masks. He said a few are issued to each police officer.

“We don’t anticipate using them daily. We wanted to make sure that we had a long shelf life,” Neubauer said. “We didn’t get that many, a couple of cases. It’s one of the things we normally stock because we do use them.”