t's
so cramped inside the East Orange Police Headquarters that morning and
evening roll calls are held in a first-floor assembly room that
doubles as a temporary holding pen for inmates awaiting processing and
jailing.
An
adjacent garage houses lockers for police officers, who rarely use
them because of water leakage and other deteriorating conditions, said
Chief Charles Grimes, a 38-year veteran of the city police force. The
firearms range in the basement has been off-limits for years because
of lead contamination. And with a city that averages about 30 arrests
per weekend, there are only 12 jail cells in the police station.
There's
no debate that the department has long since outgrown its North Munn
Avenue headquarters, built in 1928.
After
nine years of fits and starts, the city is finally moving to complete
an $18.6 million renovation of a nearby former bank building that will
become the new Police Headquarters. The first phase involves gutting
the building, which should be completed by the end of the month.
The
second phase includes renovating the building, adding a second
elevator and a two-level, 200-lot parking garage, with the lower level
reserved for police. That phase will be completed this fall. The last
phase, to complete the interior and install communication systems,
security equipment and furniture, is scheduled to be completed by
October 2004, according to Thomas Banker, a longtime political
official who has been hired by East Orange as the project's
construction manager.
"This
building is the solution to a decades-old set of problems,"
Banker said. "It provides an efficient and safe environment for
police officers, convenient access to police services for East Orange
citizens, and it resolves long-standing issues regarding the safe
management of police prisoners while in municipal custody."
When
the current Police Headquarters opened more than seven decades ago,
the department had 74 employees, housed the municipal court and
judges' chambers, jail cells and had parking spaces for less than a
dozen patrol vehicles.
Today,
there are 320 employees who process about 7,000 prisoners a year.
Parking is almost impossible. There are no jail visitation
accommodations. And the building is jammed with a cafeteria, an
infirmary, a library and a Police Athletic League program where
hundreds of youngsters all compete for space.
Ever
since he joined the East Orange Police force more than two decades
ago, Lt. Norwood Hickson said, people have been talking about building
a new facility to replace the city's grossly overcrowded headquarters.
Today,
however, a replacement public safety complex -- a state-of- the-art
facility planned for the former bank building -- is a dream coming
true.
A
combination of demolition, renovation and expansion work is under way
at the 1963-built Fidelity Union Bank building that at one time housed
Essex County social services, Essex County Sheriff's and Essex County
Prosecutor's offices, and it should be ready for city police occupancy
beginning in October 2004.
The
progress comes after many years of planning.
In
1994, when the state Department of Corrections cited East Orange for
operating a cramped public safety facility filled with code violations
and inadequate jail facilities, then-Mayor Cardell Cooper announced he
had hired an architectural firm to design a new public safety complex
on a then-vacant parcel at New Main Street and Greenwood Avenue.
The
proposal never saw the light of day, mainly because Cooper never
consulted the city council about any of the construction or financing
details. Elected officials in the cash-strapped city subsequently
nixed the $14 million plan.
Today,
things are different. The city council has authorized the venture, and
construction workers have already been hired and have begun working.
"Everybody
is hoping that everything works out and it goes through," Hickson
said of the new police headquarters, a five-story, steel-framed,
50,000-square-foot building that will feature 25 jail cells and
multipurpose meeting space to accommodate 200 people. "It's long
overdue."
Grimes
said overcrowded conditions in the current, two-story Police
Headquarters are pretty bad.
"We
had half the personnel that we now have," the police chief
recalled. In the interim years, the number of officers in the
department has almost doubled, creating crammed conditions in offices
occupied by police who work in vice, the auto squad, the detective
bureau and the police community services/Police Athletic League unit.
"We've
outgrown the building," Grimes said. "There aren't even
decent lockers for the people who work here." In fact, the
lockers are in a former garage adjacent to the building.
The
new facility is being transformed into a replacement headquarters in
three phases, Banker said.
Because
South Munn Avenue's topography makes it a single story higher than
parallel South Arlington Avenue, the building's two- level parking
garage will feature surface level parking on the South Munn Avenue,
public side of the facility, and parking for police -- in an enclosed,
single-level building -- on the South Arlington Avenue side.
Banker
said the new building also will feature segregated prisoner and
citizen activities, an electronically monitored and controlled cell
block, separate shower, bathroom and locker facilities for men and
women, a physical training room, flexible room walls, cubicles and
meeting spaces, private interview rooms, and computer link- ups to the
East Orange Municipal Court, diagonally across the street, at South
Munn Avenue and Freeway Drive East.
"Architecturally,"
Banker said of the planned facility, "it's going to be attractive
and aesthetically pleasing, and at the same time, extremely
functional."
