Chief explains benefits of new Cape Girardeau police station as construction continues

Construction on the city’s new police station is on budget and on schedule for substantial completion before the new year, Cape Girardeau police chief Wes Blair said Wednesday.

Blair said the $11 million project, which will house police operations and city court, is a marked improvement over the current police station. The first benefit of the new facility near Arena Park, Blair pointed out, is the location. Being closer to the center of the department’s patrol area, he said, will reduce average transit time for patrol officers.

And while the one-story new headquarters may look smaller than the two-story downtown station, the new 35,500-square-foot building is close to double the size of the old space.

The combined court and the fact the building is single-story, Blair said, also makes moving people in custody easier and safer by removing the need to take shackled prisoners outside the building or up or down stairs.

The facility, Blair said, was designed with security in mind, from the series of interlocking doors to the placement of windows to the use of keycard-access doors instead of the “Mayberry-type keys” Blair said the department currently uses. The new layout, he said, is indicative of how far public-safety architecture has come in the roughly four decades since the current station was built.

A view of the front of the new Cape Girardeau Police Headquarters on Wednesday near Arena park.Andrew J. Whitaker

“It just makes it a more secure environment,” he said.

The jail portion has 10 pods that each house two inmates. Showers built into the pods also will be more efficient, Blair said, removing the need to transport inmates to and from showers.

A centrally-located jailer control room will allow the jail supervisor to monitor inmates from a secure location.

“Right now, the jailers don’t even have a control space,” Blair said.

And while the department currently contracts with a medical service to have a nurse in the jail, Blair said there is little space for the nurse to operate.

“There’s a little cart next to [assistant chief Jack] Wimp’s office,” Blair said. “That’s the nurse’s office now.”

An infirmary and nurse’s office is built into the jail near the booking area.

The laundry facility, Blair said, is another upgrade, going from the residential washer and dryer now used to industrial machines.

While the detective division has several interview rooms in the police station side of the building, an additional interview room is built directly into the jail facility to cut down on transit time and potential security risks, Blair said.

Offices for court staff are situated between the jail and police station.

The station also houses a room Blair said will be used by police and the community. Police will use it for training and Major Case Squad activities as needed.

“There will be flatscreen televisions in case we’re keeping an eye on a storm or if there’s some sort of media event,” he said.

But the space also will be available to host other events, such as a Boy Scouts meeting, Blair said.

The lobby will have an additional safety feature for after-hours calls, Blair said. An external phone booth will connect directly to dispatch, who — depending on the situation — may open or lock down the lobby area. This could potentially help keep someone safe from a pursuing attacker, Blair said.

The police station itself, Blair said, was designed for efficiency, starting with the needs of the department’s largest division: patrol.

Patrol officer resources are clustered around the back of the building near the parking lot, to streamline their workflow. And since officers are often in a hurry to get out of the parking lot and respond to an emergency, Blair said the designers even took into account the placement of the parking lot’s light poles, all of which are around the perimeter of the lot.

The open layout of the detective division is intended to foster communication, which Blair said will be more conducive to collaboration among investigators.

“If I’m working a case and I hear a name that one of the other detectives is working on I can turn around and go, ‘Hey, Joe. I’ve got something working on this guy,’” he said. “Whereas now they’re in different buildings and you don’t have that.”

An upgraded evidence-intake system will help maintain integrity in the chain-of-custody, Blair said, and an upgraded, larger evidence room will be more secure than the current one in the basement of the downtown station. Three separate vaults, he explained, will be used to house gun, drug and cash evidence, per legal requirement.

“I won’t even have a key to this room once it’s finished,” the chief said.

“And this is one of the rooms I’m probably most jazzed about,” Blair said, pointing to what will be a matted training room, where officers will be able to work out and practice defensive tactics.

The station is on track for substantial completion around December and will be operational around the first of March next year, Blair said.

Cape Girardeau director of development services, Alex McElroy, said the city’s plans to sell the old building are unchanged.

tgraef@semissourian.com

(573) 388-3627

Pertinent address:

Arena Park, Cape Girardeau, Mo.

40 S. Sprigg St., Cape Girardeau, Mo.