Police station ready for future
Moscow Police expect to begin operating from the new facility in January
The Moscow Police Department believes its new police station on Southview Avenue is built for the future.
Specifically, it is built for growth. As the city grows and the department hires more staff, the two-story, 15,300-square-foot building is expected to provide the needed space the current station on Fourth Street cannot.
The final cost of the police station is $8.9 million, which includes the property purchase, design services, construction and furnishings, according to Moscow Deputy City Supervisor Bill Belknap.
Moscow residents passed a 10-year, $9.64 million general obligation bond in 2019 that funded the construction of the new station.
Capt. Tyson Berrett said the department loves working with the community and is grateful for their support of the new building.
“We can’t thank them enough,” he said.
Berrett and his fellow police officers gave the public guided tours through the new building Thursday and showed off its new features.
It has a bigger evidence room that includes more lockers and shelves than the current police station on Fourth Street. Plus, it has a super glue fumer that helps officers find fingerprints on evidence and refrigerator units for when evidence needs to be stored in the cold.
Berrett said this larger space will benefit officers by allowing them to store their evidence in one location. Given the small size of the current police station, they have to store evidence in different locations around town, he said.
There is also a licensing room, multiple interview rooms and a large training room. Berrett said the training room is for both officers and the department’s Citizen’s Academy.
“We can bring training to the city” instead of sending officers away to training centers outside Moscow, Berrett said.
The locker rooms are bigger than the current station with extra lockers ready for future staffing hires. The department currently has 35 sworn officers.
The station also has a new gym room with more space and brand new equipment. Sgt. Dustin Blaker said the weight room is valuable because officers have to pass a physical fitness test every year and must stay in good physical shape to perform their duties.
It has covered parking for 14 police vehicles. Berrett said the facility’s location gives the vehicles easy access to the east end of town by way of Southview Avenue and Indian Hills Drive, as well as easy access north and south by way of U.S. Highway 95. He said this should keep response times short.
For officers, it is “a thousand times” easier to get in and out of this station than the Fourth Street building, he said. The old station is situated between alleyways and a one-way three-lane arterial.
According to a news release from the city, the new facility will include a number of sustainable features such as solar-ready infrastructure, a low-water-use landscape for water conservation, enhanced stormwater treatment to remove contaminants and full-cutoff light fixtures to reduce light pollution.
As the city prepares for the near-term transition of the MPD’s vehicle fleet to electric vehicles, conduits for future EV charging infrastructure have also been installed.
More furniture will be installed in the building this month and Moscow Police officers will begin operating from the new facility in January. The University of Idaho plans to convert the Fourth Street space into the new Prichard Art Gallery, VandalStore and community space.
The police station is not the only thing that is new. The officers’ uniforms now have new patches with the City of Moscow’s logo. The clock tower in the logo is set to 1:49 in honor of the late Officer Lee Newbill’s radio number, who was killed in the line of duty in 2007.
Kuipers can be reached at akuipers@dnews.com.
