By Frank Lesnefsky
The Occasions-Tribune, Scranton, Pa.
OLYPHANT, Pa. — Olyphant will use almost $200,000 in grant funding to broaden and improve its police station, bettering security for each officers and people in custody.
Borough council voted this month to approve using a $187,000 Native Share Account grant to renovate its police station at 604 E. Park St., council President Jimmy Baldan stated Tuesday. The borough will now rent an architect and contractor to design and construct the police station enhancements.
“It’s a mission that’s lengthy overdue,” Baldan stated.
With 10 full-time and three part-time officers, Olyphant police are “squished in like sardines proper now,” police Chief James DeVoe stated. The police station was constructed within the late Nineties to early 2000s, he stated.
“It was constructed for us, however the plans had modified and shrunk,” DeVoe stated.
To alleviate these area constraints, the Police Division will shut in its current carport within the rear of the station, which might be used for processing crimes, and assemble a piece subsequent to the carport that can home a holding cell, a recorded interview room, an space with workstations for officers and locker rooms for female and male officers, DeVoe stated. The division doesn’t presently have a holding cell or a devoted interview room, which suggests detained suspects need to be handcuffed to a bench, with that room doubling because the interview room, DeVoe stated.
The dearth of a holding cell makes it tough for officers, he stated, recalling detainees destroying objects contained in the station.
“It is vitally arduous to maintain someone that’s appearing very unruly in a station that approach,” DeVoe stated. “It’s not safe for my officers.”
A devoted holding cell is safer for each police and suspects, who could be locked within the cell with out entry to something that they may use to hurt themselves, he stated.
“They’ll’t damage themselves,” DeVoe stated. “They’ll’t damage my officers, both.”
The addition means the division will meet requirements for having juveniles on the station, DeVoe stated, explaining anybody underneath 18 isn’t imagined to be held inside earshot of grownup detainees.
“Proper now, our station is simply too small to do this, hole partitions and every little thing else,” he stated.
Police are additionally redesigning the station’s widespread space to enhance safety, DeVoe stated. The renovations will add a wall with tinted, bullet-proof glass the place guests could be referred to as to the window and, if wanted, escorted in, he stated.
“We don’t have to fret about unauthorized folks any longer strolling in,” he stated. “There might be a double layer of safety.”
Outdoors the station, the division plans to construct a four-stall storage the place officers can again their autos in, safely take away a detainee and convey them into the station with no probability of escape or harm, DeVoe stated. To accommodate the Police Division’s Ok-9 program, DeVoe stated they may even be constructing 5 to 6 kennels off of the storage. Though Olyphant solely has one Ok-9, a German Shepherd named King, the extra area will enable the division to assist different native police Ok-9 handlers to handle their animals, in addition to giving the division a spot to carry misplaced canines, he stated.
He lauded Olyphant Borough Council for its assist of his division, together with working with it on the renovation mission, buying physique cameras, new autos, gear and license plate readers.
DeVoe hopes to begin work by the late spring or early summer time, estimating it is going to take one to 2 years throughout a number of phases of building.
“All the pieces that we’re doing is simply going to make a safer working surroundings,” DeVoe stated.
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