Safety lacking at some police stations
James A. Kimble
Inside the booking room of the Hampstead police station, an officer sits at a desk, inches from a metal pole drilled into the wall and a short wooden bench that substitutes for a holding cell.
“This is the biggest problem right here,” police Chief Joseph Beaudoin said, reaching for one of the bars where police handcuff people they have just arrested. “Anyone sitting here can actually reach one of the officers. We’ve had incidents where someone here would want to go to the bathroom and they’d go right on the floor.”
Beaudoin also worries about the lack of bulletproof glass in the front window of the dispatch room. And there’s no segregated area where juveniles can be held or interviewed, as required by state law.
The chief said the state regularly sends the department letters, notifying him Hampstead is not in compliance with state regulations because of the lack of juvenile interview rooms and waiting areas.
Salem police Chief Paul Donovan has his own safety concerns about his town’s 40-year-old station.
The booking room has narrow walls and holding cells where people are capable of hanging themselves by tying a shirt or pants to its bars, he said.
“A lot of people come in here impaired or on drugs,” Donovan said. “We have a responsibility to make sure they don’t get hurt. A modern cell block wouldn’t have the sharp corners or bars, and it’d give us the ability to control the individual.”
Despite these safety issues, voters in both towns have rejected proposals in the past that would have paid for new police stations.
A year after suffering a defeat at the polls, Hampstead police are hoping voters this spring will approve a new 10,000-square-foot facility, which is 1,000 square feet smaller in an effort to lower the cost from $2.4 million to $2.2 million. The existing station was retrofitted in 1986 from a two-bay garage that once housed the Fire Department.
Hampstead selectmen Chairman Rick Hartung chalks up last year’s loss at the polls to voter education. Supporters missed getting a new station by 180 votes in March. Long-term bonds require an approval of two-thirds (or 67 percent) of voters, rather than a simple majority.
“I don’t think we educated people enough in terms of the depth of our need,” he said. “Even for me, I didn’t realize at first all that goes into a modern police station.”
Those requirements include handicap accessibility and segregated interview and holding facilities for juveniles, he said. Hartung said he’s optimistic the town will get the station the second time around.
Beaudoin said he thinks some voters have questioned the need for a new station because they’re unaware about the types of crime the department handles. But, like most other Southern New Hampshire towns, crime in Hampstead has risen dramatically over the past two decades, along with the population.
Over the past year, Hampstead police have responded to about 10,000 calls, including sexual assaults, a massive fight that started at a wedding reception, two fatal crashes and a mother charged with using heroin while pregnant.
“People don’t realize we have the lakes, the campgrounds — all of those areas add to the calls, the domestics, the accidents,” Sgt. Rick Chambers said.
Salem proposes new site
Salem police also are working on plans for a new station that will go before voters in March 2008, four years after voters rejected a proposal that would have provided a replacement for the existing 40-year-old building. The cost and size of the new facility have not been set.
Salem voters defeated the 2004 plan despite open-house tours beforehand that showed off open sewer pipes, a cramped evidence room, and electrical and ventilation problems.
One issue that rankled some Salem voters in 2004 was the plan to locate the station off Lawrence Road, next door to a senior housing complex. People complained they wanted to see a more prominent location, closer to the highway.
Planners hope they’ve addressed that issue now by proposing building next to the current station.
“One key thing we’re looking at now,” Donovan said, “is to let people know this is not a building just for the cops. It’s a building for them.
“If you’re a victim of a crime, you deserve to come into a room with privacy. You could wind up in a cell for a DWI where somebody has urinated the night before. We don’t want people’s family members in those cells, and we want to deliver a level of service you’d get from any other business in town.”
If Hampstead voters turn down the $2.2 million proposal, it could set the department on a path similar to Donovan’s.
Salem police have spent $15,000 revamping the station’s heating and ventilation system in 2004 after ice dams began forming on the roof. It even seeped into Salem’s evidence room. The department spent another $15,000 on extensive electrical work, which prompted a weekend move to the fire station months ago while the work was completed. The department also pays $14,000 a year to lease a trailer for office space for detectives.
Pelham chief can empathize
Pelham police Chief Joe Roark said departments like Salem and Hampstead are in tough positions — stuck between trying to negotiate with taxpayers for a new station and dodging liability issues every time someone walks into their station.
“If you have an in-custody death, the liability is extraordinary,” Roark said. “There aren’t many inches of this Police Department that aren’t video monitored. Using a 40-year-old station (like Salem’s) just isn’t practical.”
Public areas of a station now need to be liability-proof as well, Roark said. He cited a recent incident at the Windham police station, where a man barricaded himself in a bathroom, requiring a local SWAT team to get him out.
Had the incident happened in Salem, it could have resulted in someone getting hurt, he said.
“That’s why a lot of these lobbies now are practically bomb proof,” Roark said.
Roark said other protection such as computer-based logs and surveillance of who enters an evidence room and booking areas are common standards for police work.
Before voters approved a new municipal complex in 2002, Pelham police worked between the fire station and a nearby trailer.
“We didn’t have a true locker room, so when we hired a female officer, we had to put a policy in place for knocking and announcing,” Roark said.
Beaudoin said the sole female officer at his department gets to use the public bathroom to keep a locker to change.
He said it’s no secret to residents that his department has a legitimate case for a larger facility because of the cramped quarters there, but people are understandably wary of increasing their tax bills.
“People see the need. They’re OK with the location,” he said. “It’s the money.”
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