Police station opened with new equipment

The Maricopa Police Department cut the ribbon this morning on its new 32,000-square-foot police station at 18135 N. Park Plaza.

It is more than twice the size of the old facility next door, which housed the MPD headquarters until next Wednesday.

“Can you believe it?” Mayor Nancy Smith asked a crowd of dozens of residents, dignitaries and city employees. “It’s only been 15 years since we hired our first police chief.”

Smith described the new facility as an “extraordinary place” for dispatchers and police and said it was “built debt-free.”

The old train station from 2013 will serve two new purposes.

“Half of it will be a theater, the other half a Incubator space for new companies”, said Smith.

MPD Captain Stephen Judd recalled how far the department has come.

“We worked in trailers that were pushed together to look like rooms and offices,” Judd said of the department’s formation in 2007. “We were at the peak of our career as a department at the time, with two administrative vans, a trailer for property and evidence, a patrol car that I thought was a detention facility, a report-writing area and a break room. We handcuffed our guests to a bar next to where we wrote reports.”

After the speeches, Smith and Police Chief Mark Goodman cut the ribbon. Residents toured the building with volunteer police officers. It looked completely different from the last time InMaricopa reporter Visited.

“I think one of the things I like most about the new station is the ability to have our force simulator here on site,” Goodman said.

The VIRTRA Simulatorthat mentally prepares police officers for the use of force was located off-site at Central Arizona College’s Maricopa campus. It has since been moved to a separate room in the new station.

This was perhaps the most exciting part of the tour. Watch a video of how it works Here.

“Now that it’s here in the building, we have a lot more flexibility. We can come in and run through some scenarios with our officers, evaluate their performance, learn something from it and then go out into the field and apply what we’ve learned,” Goodman said.

The new station also features a security exit, giving officers an opportunity to thoroughly search vehicles that are not on the street or in a parking lot.

“If we need to examine a vehicle for evidence, we can bring it into our secure facility,” Goodman said. “It’s climate controlled, so we can really take our time looking for evidence in the vehicle.”

The police will Moving into the new station Wednesday and ThursdayGoodman expressed hope that 911 dispatchers will be able to move into their new headquarters within the station in September, but added, “Motorola is a little behind on delivery,” so an exact date has not yet been set.

“We’re setting up brand new, state-of-the-art dispatch stations for our folks,” Goodman said. “Once we get them here, we’re going to be super excited because I won’t have to drive to the Copper Sky substation to talk to our dispatchers anymore.”

Goodman said it’s important that all the pieces of the MPD puzzle fit together because “without our dispatchers, archivists, case workers and evidence specialists, we couldn’t function.”

“This is a huge milestone, not just for the department, but for the entire city,” Goodman said. “The difference is huge and incredible, and we’re really excited to start this new chapter that will allow us to serve the community even better than we already do.”