By Frank Lesnefsky
The Times-Tribune, Scranton, Pa.
OLYPHANT, Pa. — Olyphant will use nearly $200,000 in grant funding to expand and upgrade its police station, improving safety for both officers and those in custody.
Borough council voted this month to approve the use of a $187,000 Local Share Account grant to renovate its police station at 604 E. Park St., council President Jimmy Baldan said Tuesday. The borough will now hire an architect and contractor to design and build the police station improvements.
“It’s a project that is long overdue,” Baldan said.
With 10 full-time and three part-time officers, Olyphant police are “squished in like sardines right now,” police Chief James DeVoe said. The police station was built in the late 1990s to early 2000s, he said.
“It was built for us, but the plans had changed and shrunk,” DeVoe said.
To alleviate those space constraints, the Police Department will close in its existing carport in the rear of the station, which will be used for processing crimes, and construct a section next to the carport that will house a holding cell, a recorded interview room, an area with workstations for officers and locker rooms for male and female officers, DeVoe said. The department does not currently have a holding cell or a dedicated interview room, which means detained suspects have to be handcuffed to a bench, with that room doubling as the interview room, DeVoe said.
The lack of a holding cell makes it difficult for officers, he said, recalling detainees destroying items inside the station.
“It is very hard to keep somebody that is acting very unruly in a station that way,” DeVoe said. “It’s not secure for my officers.”
A dedicated holding cell is safer for both police and suspects, who would be locked in the cell without access to anything that they could use to harm themselves, he said.
“They can’t hurt themselves,” DeVoe said. “They can’t hurt my officers, either.”
The addition means the department will meet standards for having juveniles at the station, DeVoe said, explaining anyone under 18 is not supposed to be held within earshot of adult detainees.
“Right now, our station is too small to do that, hollow walls and everything else,” he said.
Police are also redesigning the station’s common area to improve security, DeVoe said. The renovations will add a wall with tinted, bullet-proof glass where visitors would be called to the window and, if needed, escorted in, he said.
“We don’t have to worry about unauthorized people any longer walking in,” he said. “There will be a double layer of security.”
Outside the station, the department plans to build a four-stall garage where officers can back their vehicles in, safely remove a detainee and bring them into the station with no chance of escape or injury, DeVoe said. To accommodate the Police Department’s K-9 program, DeVoe said they will also be building five to six kennels off of the garage. Although Olyphant only has one K-9, a German Shepherd named King, the additional space will allow the department to help other local police K-9 handlers to take care of their animals, as well as giving the department a place to hold lost dogs, he said.
He lauded Olyphant Borough Council for its support of his department, including working with it on the renovation project, purchasing body cameras, new vehicles, equipment and license plate readers.
DeVoe hopes to start work by the late spring or early summer, estimating it will take one to two years across multiple phases of construction.
“Everything that we’re doing is just going to make a safer working environment,” DeVoe said.
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