New police station ready for show and tell

SWAMPSCOTT – If you happen to be arrested in Swampscott and taken to the new police station, good luck trying to escape.?This is more robust, more secure, more safe. For example, in the old booking room, you could have just run right out the door,” Police Chief Ron Madigan said this week. He noted the new booking area was designed to limit the movement of a person being held and the chance of that person becoming combative.After operating on Burrill Street since 1937, local police on Aug. 27 moved into a place equipped for the 21st century. On Saturday you?ll be able to see for yourself at an open house from noon to 2 p.m. at 531 Humphrey St.Madigan said during a tour around the station this week that it feels “fabulous” to finally be working in a modern building.?I realized how badly the old station failed to serve our needs,” he said.Saturday?s open house will include refreshments, tours of the two-story building, including a visit through the cell block, and a chance to check out police vehicles.Madigan said he was most pleased with the new station?s cell and booking area. At the old station, detainees were housed in the basement, which he called “an unsafe condition,” because those being held would have to be moved from the booking room in the back of the building, through the lobby, then down two flights of stairs.Now an officer can pull into a fenced-off area in the fleet maintenance garage, which Madigan called a “crucial feature,” and take a detainee through two key-card-entry doors right to the booking room and cell block. Before, there was no separation from garage items and there were potential tripping hazards as someone was being taken into the station, he said.While the old station had two male cells and one female cell, there are now two male cells, two female cells and one juvenile cell that is also accessible to the disabled. The cells themselves have sturdy, all-metal doors, Madigan said, instead of the former doors with old-fashioned bars that were retrofitted with Plexiglas to close up the gaps.The Humphrey Street station also has a dedicated meeting room that seats 30 people, equipped with two wall-mounted, flat-screen televisions, a white board and a projector. Madigan said it is used for training and meetings, as well as an emergency operation center, if needed. The room can also be used by community groups by request, and he said that has already started to take place.The increased space in the new station has allowed for individualized rooms for police tasks, Madigan said, as opposed to using the men?s locker room as a catch-all for tasks like roll call, writing up reports and meetings.Madigan said he has heard from residents that they like the look of the new building.?It?s not a big edifice in the middle of a residential neighborhood,” he said.There were some setbacks during construction. Work was supposed to begin in January 2012, but Madigan said a pipe burst in the pumping station next door, so the start date was moved to March. Police Station Building Committee Chairman Patrick Jones said there were also scheduling issues with the contractor, TLT Construction, in getting the project finished by the original May 2013 completion date.?There were some struggles along the way about trying to learn why there were delays. It didn?t prevent us from ultimately getting there, but there were some delays, and we had trouble understanding why there were delays,” Madigan said.Overall, he said a new building that emphasizes safety and professionalism is just what his staff deserves.?I think it?s given everybody a lift,” Madigan said. “I think (the old station) was a really run-down building. It was tired. It had exceeded its lifespan.”