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Station gets room to grow
By jeanne starmack
new castle, pa.
The New Castle, Pa., Police Department has some room to grow.
The department was uprooted in early April from its cramped quarters in the municipal building on North Jefferson Street and replanted in a building at least four times bigger at 303 E. North St.
The detectives and the narcotics division no longer have to be in the basement.
There’s room in the huge garage for nine vehicles.
No one will be bumping elbows in the spacious roll-call and report room, and the traffic department has its own space.
There’s a central booking area for fingerprinting and photographing that also will be used for video arraignments by every law- enforcement agency in Lawrence County except Ellwood City.
“The state is trying to push for central booking,” explained Police Chief Robert Salem as he showed off the building Thursday.
Salem said the central processing area even will generate revenue. The city will charge a fee, between $75 and $100, for each booking.
There are some claustrophobic accommodations in the new station. The three small, square holding cells don’t have bars, but their glass windows are break-proof.
There’s even a kitchen off the reception area.
And that is just the first floor.
Spread out over three floors of what used to be the North Street School, the station also features a classroom that already has been used by the federal Drug Enforcement Agency for training.
“People came from D.C., New York and Chicago and were in town for a week,” Salem said.
That generated revenue for area hotels, stores and restaurants. Salem said the department already is getting reservations for another class in July, hosted by the National Association of School Resource Officers.
On the top floor, Salem’s office is easily twice the size of his old one. There’s plenty of room for records and storage, and there’s even a large, empty room the department can grow into.
Morale has expanded along with the department’s space, Salem said.
“We’re happy,” he said of the department’s 36 officers and three civilian workers.
The move went well, he said. It happened over the course of a week, and the department was up and running April 2.
He made some interesting finds as the department was clearing out, he said.
A stack of reports from the late 1800s he found in a closet and a lie-detector machine from the 1970s will go on display somewhere in the building.
The city got two $800,000 state grants in 2010 to remodel the building, which had housed Sky Bank for a while. When the bank moved out several years ago, it donated the building to the city for $1.