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By Frank Lesnefsky
The Occasions-Tribune, Scranton, Pa.
OLYPHANT, Pa. — Olyphant will use practically $200,000 in grant funding to broaden and improve its police station, enhancing security for each officers and people in custody.
Borough council voted this month to approve using a $187,000 Native Share Account grant to renovate its police station at 604 E. Park St., council President Jimmy Baldan stated Tuesday. The borough will now rent an architect and contractor to design and construct the police station enhancements.
“It’s a undertaking that’s lengthy overdue,” Baldan stated.
With 10 full-time and three part-time officers, Olyphant police are “squished in like sardines proper now,” police Chief James DeVoe stated. The police station was constructed within the late Nineteen Nineties to early 2000s, he stated.
“It was constructed for us, however the plans had modified and shrunk,” DeVoe stated.
To alleviate these house constraints, the Police Division will shut in its current carport within the rear of the station, which might be used for processing crimes, and assemble a piece subsequent to the carport that can home a holding cell, a recorded interview room, an space with workstations for officers and locker rooms for female and male officers, DeVoe stated. The division doesn’t at present have a holding cell or a devoted interview room, which implies detained suspects need to be handcuffed to a bench, with that room doubling because the interview room, DeVoe stated.
The shortage of a holding cell makes it tough for officers, he stated, recalling detainees destroying gadgets contained in the station.
“It is vitally exhausting to maintain anyone that’s appearing very unruly in a station that means,” DeVoe stated. “It’s not safe for my officers.”
A devoted holding cell is safer for each police and suspects, who could be locked within the cell with out entry to something that they may use to hurt themselves, he stated.
“They’ll’t damage themselves,” DeVoe stated. “They’ll’t damage my officers, both.”
The addition means the division will meet requirements for having juveniles on the station, DeVoe stated, explaining anybody below 18 shouldn’t be presupposed to be held inside earshot of grownup detainees.
“Proper now, our station is simply too small to try this, hole partitions and all the things else,” he stated.
Police are additionally redesigning the station’s widespread space to enhance safety, DeVoe stated. The renovations will add a wall with tinted, bullet-proof glass the place guests could be referred to as to the window and, if wanted, escorted in, he stated.
“We don’t have to fret about unauthorized folks any longer strolling in,” he stated. “There might be a double layer of safety.”
Exterior the station, the division plans to construct a four-stall storage the place officers can again their automobiles in, safely take away a detainee and convey them into the station with no probability of escape or damage, DeVoe stated. To accommodate the Police Division’s Ok-9 program, DeVoe stated they may even be constructing 5 to 6 kennels off of the storage. Though Olyphant solely has one Ok-9, a German Shepherd named King, the extra house will permit the division to assist different native police Ok-9 handlers to maintain their animals, in addition to giving the division a spot to carry misplaced canines, he stated.
He lauded Olyphant Borough Council for its assist of his division, together with working with it on the renovation undertaking, buying physique cameras, new automobiles, tools and license plate readers.
DeVoe hopes to start out work by the late spring or early summer season, estimating it’ll take one to 2 years throughout a number of phases of development.
“The whole lot that we’re doing is simply going to make a safer working setting,” DeVoe stated.
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© 2025 The Occasions-Tribune (Scranton, Pa.). Go to thetimes-tribune.com.
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