March 28, 2024

The Current Police Station is Small, Old & Outdated

Posted

The Police station we currently work out of was built in the early 1970’s and when I came to the Police Department in 1984, there were fourteen Police Officers on the Department. The station was small for the fourteen of us and with no storage space inside, we used an old box truck body in the parking lot for storage. Over the years, the town has grown and to provide the proper level of Policing, the Police has grown too. In 1984 the town’s population was 7,616 and the Police Department was staffed with fourteen officers. In 2017 the population is approaching 13,000 and the Police Department is staffed with twenty two officers.

Some of the issues at the current building are obvious. It’s small, old and outdated. Some things that are not obvious from the outside are:

  • Anytime we get heavy rain we have water leaking through the roof and into the Police station. We have had computers, ceilings and rugs ruined on numerous occasions.
  • The front lobby area is small and there are no public restrooms available.
  • The Dispatch area is outdated and does not allow our dispatchers to work efficiently. There are no restrooms in Dispatch.
  • Office space is limited and most of the space we have is taken up as storage.
  • There is no break room for officers or dispatchers to eat their dinner; they often eat in the dispatch area or in the booking room.
  • The female locker room is a 4’x6’ closet that was turned into a locker room for female officers.
  • The holding cells are outdated and not in compliance with the Commonwealth of Massachusetts regulations. The hallway where the cells are located is small and presents a danger to officers when attempting to place or remove combative prisoners. 
  • We currently are using a 52 foot trailer in the back parking lot for storage which includes storage of our records.
  • The locker room used by the male officers is full and there is no room to add lockers to accommodate any additional officers.

While these are only a portion of the problems the Police face while working in this facility, they are some of the more significant ones. The Police Officers in Rehoboth have long outgrown this building!

James Trombetta

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