BEDFORD – Yesterday, Bedford’s new police station opened to the public to showcase the new building before the move is made from the old station to the new one. Mayor Sam Craig gave tours of the station to any who wanted an inside look.
The open house “helps the city get a picture of community involvement for law enforcement,” according to the Mayor.
He also thinks the new station will be a selling point in regards to recruitment. “I think it will be a benefit for the city as far as recruitment, giving them a better place to work and a new facility to allow them to work to the best of their ability.”
Many of the issues with the old building have been addressed. Built almost 110 years ago, the present station was home to the Bedford Fire Department before they moved to a better location in 1966. Since then, the Bedford Police Department has been operating out of it, doing the best with what they had.
The new station, from planning to fruition, has been roughly a year and a half in the making, with just under a year of actual construction.
Before they could build, they took several months to confer with architects.
They had to remove the built-in fridges and freezers remaining from the old Aldi building and add walls to the “open box of a building,” as Police Chief Terry Moore put it.
“Where it’s at, it will be a lot more accessible to the public,” Moore said, emphasizing the new parking space.
There is plenty of parking that allows for separation between the officers and public parking.
The old station has severely limited parking, and those who wanted to file a report often had to park blocks down the road and then walk to the station. For a long time, the old station didn’t even have a lobby, and people would have to wait outside.
The new structure has a spacious, comfortably sized lobby.
The Squad Room, once a small room that could barely fit the handful of desks and people during normal hours, much less the eight to ten officers present during a shift change, is now a spacious room that will feature plenty of room for 4 tables, a small kitchen space, and counter space for sorting evidence.
The rush during shift changes will be easily navigable in the new space.
The old police station had many of the same rooms crammed into a small area, and despite space between them, there was poor sound management, meaning that everyone could hear everything going on and being said in the area.
In the new location, there are offices for each detective, adequate spacing between interview rooms and offices to ensure privacy for all involved, and a more efficient, less distracting workplace.
Additionally, the station features a conference room that will be better suited to meetings of both the Police force as well as the City of Bedford in case other options are unavailable.
Police Chief Terry Moore said station meetings took place in his office at the old station, and it was impractical and crowded to try and fit 10 or more people into the already small room.
The new conference room will make training new recruits easier, meetings smoother, and overall improve performance for the department all around.
The previous dispatch room was a quarter of the size of the new one, and the proximity of other workstations made the task harder and more distracting.
“We tried to sound-proof as much as we could with dispatch,” Moore explained, after years of experiencing the difficulties of the old station.
“The Redevelopment Commission was a big force behind the new station,” Police Chief Moore said. “We are really lucky here that our elected officials have always supported us as best they can.”
“It’s important that people realize that the Redevelopment Commission has invested so much into public safety.”
Public safety is one of the primary factors considered when people move to or from communities, right along with schools and employment.
With the new station, Bedford shows dedication to helping its police force perform to the best of their ability and keeping its citizens safe.
The Bedford Police Department hopes to move into the facility by mid-October following some delays with service installations.
