Randolph In Action - Randolph Police Station

[Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] hello and welcome to another episode of Randolph in action my name is David Murphy I'm the town manager here in the town of Randolph and today I'm at 41 South Main Street home of Randolph Town Hall and the newly renovated Randolph police station in the recent past you've seen programs on our newly renovated library a brand new fire station the recreation department programs at Belcher Park and our snow fighting operations DPW today we have a very exciting program of the newly renovated Randolph Police Department through the support of the Town Council we recently spent 6 million dollars to renovate the existing police station and add a new addition to accommodate the needs of 21st century Police Department today will be led on a tour by Randolph Police Chief William pace who will show us all the new improvements and talk about the operations of your Police Department so let's take a walk inside Miche face and starch or pinchy face hi how are you thank you for having us today very excited about the tour of the police station we're good to see you before we get started why don't you tell us a little bit about your time here in Randolph police part well I was appointed in 1992 the Randolph police have been going to my 27th year in October a little chief since 2010 that's seven years and it's been quite a good experience well seven years is a long time as police chief what is that puts you in the rankings of all time durations chief it's going to be near the top well it's a lot of the top three so very excited to see the police station a lot of the residents don't see the inside of a police station which is probably a good thing in some respects but there was a significant effort to renovate and put an addition on to the police station would like to share that with the public so if you wouldn't mind giving us a tour today we could talk about not only the new building facility but also the operation of the department itself would really appreciate it absolutely look it's all yes well we're here on the new Lobby there's actually two sections of a building this is the new section of the building we actually put a an addition onto the bold part of the building so this is a lobby much nicer than what we had before you know it's much more welcoming much more we had before and everything is state-of-the-art as far as security for our police officers and all our employees right here is a ballistic glass right here and it's actually ballistic walls all the way through on both sides of the building so that's been an important upgrade in police design over the last several years so that's one thing behind you we have our med return and this is where residents could come and return you know just got medication that they don't want to they're not using anymore or they just want to get rid of it's a safe way to do it we bring it to Covanta once a month and they destroy all the medication by incineration so this area here chief this is a new to the addition in Republic interview room can we take a walk through it every year we show you that some living section absolutely come on in so public interview room people come in from the public they may have a certain problem we will sit and talk to them here as you can see we have the police patch behind there if you see me on TV every once in a while you'll see that patch behind me this also doubles as a press room at times so this is the you know it's a private area we can meet the public so this is an area that we didn't have in the old station essentially if there was some type of conversation you need to have what the victim or some looking for a report or something that was out in the open this allows you a private space now to have you know some confidential conversations with folks that come in with sometimes sensitive issues that they just want to talk to an officer one-on-one very that's true and that's exactly how we use it that's what was designed for so next door chief is the dispatcher is that correct come on take a look this is our brain new dispatch center climate control which we never had before in the old station where there's 56 different cameras on the monitors that you see through in all areas of police station every cell can be monitored every every hallway the lobby everywhere so we have a good good view of everything we also have intersection cameras up there on the on the left of where you are right now so we can monitor traffic at time as you can see this is a huge improvement from what we had in our last dispatch center you know the technology is has really increased and we're actually getting the next-gen version of a 9-1-1 and next couple of weeks which will be a huge boost to the service for people in our community must be the heart of the operation it is the nerve center pretty much the rear center of the operation every call that comes to the police department comes through here even just regular general phone calls come through the dispatch center so if it could be a very busy place at times so these guys handle it well so that's great so this facility is all part of the new addition so in addition to the existing building we added about 3,500 square feet yes on to the addition this is part of the new construction is the rest of it you want to see the rest of the show absolutely love the squad room so this is upgrading the squad room in training facility this is a huge connection we went back in the old part of the building this was actually a dispatch center at one time but this is a huge improvement to what we had before we really didn't have a training facility before and a squat room when a police problem is on duty the first thing he does is roll call this is where we meet it's usually 15 minutes before the shift begins and they find out what happens after chips prior any special orders that we may give to you know for the upcoming shift or you know just general crime information this is what happens here every day in this room and I say we do we do have training sessions here quite frequently and really this is a huge improvement so this is allowed you also to enhance your on-site training as opposed to sending the department out to other locations you can now do more in-service training and on-site turning knowledge you have a facility like this can be at a low level and it's actually much more cost effective to bring a constructor here and citizen duty all over the state so this has been really good for us yeah compared to the old roll call room I can say this is a drastic improve everything value work program you know I'm very happy with how this all came out because I think this answers our needs many many years into the future so this is a network around basically just computers computer service this is your e 9-1-1 system with the whole community a very important piece of equipment here and that's what we dial nine-one-one goes through this next door we have our evidence room now I understand this was one of the driving needs as the job of policing the industry changes into the 21st century this was one of the main concerns I think that led to the renovation this building can you talk to us a little bit about how that's changed from your time is from an office all the way to the chief kind of the evidentiary responsibilities well you know in the past few years you know there's been it's been very important to maintain obviously evidence in the security of it so this locker here all these a locked that means there's evidence inside to an officer comes in he may have evidence he'll bag and tag it so if you put the evidence inside and it can't be accessed by anybody else except the first minute processes evidence does evidence processing room so this is an evidence this is a dryer of clothing or bedding or things that we there may be some DNA and it's on blood evidence anything like that we're actually driving this before we send it to the lab and this is a super glue fuming chamber to lift fingerprints off an object that aren't visible you can put this in this machine we have a cryo analyte disc that comes down and the glue actually attaches to the salt and the fingerprint and then we're able to bring the fingerprint up this is the opposite side of the locker we just saw so the only person has access to this is the person that manages the evidence so he'll come in to undo the lock and take all the evidence and it goes into this evidence room I am now that evidence room is both pad controlled and key controls and there's only three people that have access to that evidence room and I'm not one of them so if the person that does evidence in to assistants that assist him in processing evidence so from a chain of custody standpoint this system has really improved our processes from night and day yeah it really is buttoned down you know what we do because evidence has to come in here it's secure then nobody else can access it and then it goes right into the evidence room after its recorded so yeah it's a good system so now we're in the Sallyport area and you'd asked me earlier if somebody comes in under arrest how what the experience is like so this door opens ku police cruiser comes in all the way down to the end and officer as you can see over there there were gun lockers right there so what you do is just take your gun out put it in a locker take the key with you it's very important when we talk about police stations we talk about secure areas and non secure areas this is a secure area so obviously very important that they stole their gun and they do and then the person will be brought in here to the booking area a lot of the stuff you see here has gone to the FBI Clearing House and a lot of the design is based around for black of a better term bad things that have happened in other places so that that design is here as you can see it's actually delayed takes a couple of minutes so that in case so we tried to escape it would give us a few seconds to try to catch them this is the booking area which we brought personally brought in here and depending on the severity or the demeanor of the person they can be handcuffed to the to the bar here the commanding officer will then book the prisoner the detainee as we call them through here through our computer system and certain things happen we get all their information height weight address all those things occupation while their personal property is inventoried and put into a plastic bag and put into one of these lockers over here and there's secure for the whole time that they're here that it's done in front of the detainee and then the booking process begins so down here as part of as you can see like on TV and stuff there's a booking photo this is that exactly where it would be there's a 65% gray I know that because if you have from the FBI they they want everything to be uniform and so that is 65% gray and that's what the industry is going to behind you here is the computer that scans fingerprints it used to be we did it with ink and you probably remember those days and they were all blotchy so it's just glass now and basically the fingerprint is rolled just like this across the glass so these when you take fingerprints so we get a local copy and one goes to the state police automatically anyone goes to the FBI for a felony offense it's not for misdemeanors but so those three automatically go electronically and that's you know when I first started we used to send them by mail and you know your things have changed so that's a good feature over here is the breath test machine and somebody gets arrested for um operating under the influence of alcohol they'll take a breath test and results are recorded and they they go through the court system over behind you this is all the same area there are times like we have the decontamination area sometimes somebody'll come in under arrest you know that may have enjoyed some pepper spray this is for any area where they can wash their eyes clean up and decontaminate and over here is an area for multiple arrests you know we can we can accommodate six people in one person being both seven people at a time this is an interview room for the detention area it could be for the police it could be a detaining meeting with his attorney right here this is where they would do that so actually the bail Commissioner uses that also so if somebody's getting bailed what they do is they're out here we bring them out here they're secure so then the person would just leave and go back to the parking lot or get picked up or whatever so so this exit is new as well too isn't the old system have the detainees exiting out the basically through the station itself it's very important to I mean we think about police station being secured not secured but it's also public in non-public areas because we have to keep our employees safe first yeah that was a huge issue for us because somebody would get bailed sometimes upset sometimes not and have to go through really our dispatch center to go back up to the public so your entire processing center was through the front door under the old station but now all of these components that you just showed us they're actually enhancing the safety of not just your employees but if they were public in the front lobby or anything like that used to have to take in detainees right through the front lobby so you guys have really put in a lot of thought into improving the safety of both the public and the employees in this new design absolutely I mean and then it really that was paramount in the whole design so I think we answered that quite well with this design so here we are in the lockup area federal law says that we everything has to be sight and sound separated between juveniles and adult males and adult males and females so we have that here in this design right here is our juvenile area they're obviously sight and sound separated from the adult take a look at the cell here not very nice but it's going to mat mattress a blanket so obviously secure a bathroom and this is where somebody would stay so with juveniles we don't normally use these it has to be a family and somebody that's really kind of out of control for the most part Reuben aisles are kept in an office monitored by a knob now all of these cell designs I know you went through a pretty rigorous process relative to the standards could you talk about some of the differences between maybe some of the old cells compared to the new you mentioned that and the old building all the cells were essentially together they were able to separate them out there certain other designs the cells that the average person would notice to think about that is also a safety enhancement these are sliding doors which is a huge upgrade for us it makes it so much easier to act and actually have their open or close the door that this has been a significant upgrade and much more safer for the detainee also where we're expected once every three months by the Department of Public Health and make sure that our lockup is in compliance and it can be challenging to stay up with them but we do the best we can and I think here is new even the lighting itself is much more conducive to it's a more calming experience than what we had before at least that's what the experts say now how many cells total do you have here in the station I have 12 I have eight males two juvenile and two females and I can show you the recipe like the seagull so this is out in the male pod that's four cells on this side four on the opposite side of the hallway again sliding door which is big upgrade for us mattress this one actually is retrofitted for handicapped should that be needed these cells were actually rehabbed these were part of the original cells and so there pretty much state of the odd now one of the things I noticed about them is they're all empty which is a good sign right well yeah can you talk to me a little bit about I know the crime rate and Randolph every year something that we discuss within the last six seven eight years could you talk a little bit about what you've seen what trend is seeing and well since 2010 I think we've been very fortunate in the respect that we've had a reduction in the crime rate a significant reduction and aggravated assaults and things like that we're only empty day because it's daytime and arrestees go to court on the same day but usually at night we have a pretty good crowd yeah I crime rate has been going down steadily and we just it's crime something you just have to keep fighting it just you know it so you can never just sit back on your laurels and hope for the best if you have to keep going after it so we've been lucky in that we got so this is the female area so Massachusetts law says that if a prevails held overnight at a plea held at the police station that a female matron has to model them so this is where the matron would sit we hire matrons on an as-needed basis and they'll come in any time really could be in the middle of the night and they fit and they monitor the prisoner one of these self and again sight and sound separated as required by law prior to the renovation we had a very very small locker room for like 45 men and policing there's a lot of equipment and really there was just no room for anything it was a mess this is a huge advance to a police officers day these the Walkman family get the lights here I would say anything is expected to lock them but I mean as you can see these lockers were a state-of-the-art the the old lockers they had with like high school lockers or doing a high school lockers this they think of everything there's a place to secure your weapon ammunition clothing I can fit my own wardrobe in here trust me hats things like that boots you can also put boots on the bottom on the bottom here so really it's a huge amount space for eat jobs to start their day with how does this compare with the old facility chief you mentioned it was small you're talking about a half the size or not a quarter of the sides and you know there wasn't really adequate shower facilities they have that now this is a huge huge improvement because if you think about it you know the officers up next on the road most of the day home most of them are and this is basically their office and they had no place before to put their things who's in their car or in the cruiser or whatever and now this makes it very much more orderly for them give me a day so you also have a strong female representation on the department you've seen upgrades in those facilities as well - I know you mentioned this was the men's locker if you will yeah but how'd it be the female Optima transform from alterna well I mean we added some more lockers you know not this style actually most of the females are in leadership positions so they have their own opposite that lives is there's one that's killer patrols up in this room used to be the old roll column this is the old squad remodel yeah this has been a huge boost for people at work here because just it you know be able to organize your things and start the day right is a huge advantage there's a fitness room that's maintained by the Randolph Police Association and you know small but effective if somebody's just getting off shift they want to come in for a workout this is where they would do it again this is financed by the police association but this is their space and it's use quite frequently I have to say it's um it's a good part of the building I know health and wellness of your department is something that you've put a strong emphasis on can you talk to me a little bit about policing in the 21st century and kind of your vision as the chief about how important that is to your employees well yes and you know the last few years or last five years the policing has probably been the most difficult for my whole career and for many different reasons but I think that above all that we as an employer we have to take care of our police officers in the respect that for health or wellness and for stress and for helping the people that help for people so that's really what our emphasis been around less a couple of years that let me come up here this is all part of the building but we have a new addition up here we were able to we had the space for auxilary police headquarters so prior to them coming to the police station they were at st. Bernadette's they were at the the Board of Health building on Colonel Lane they were at the food pantry they're all over the place so finally the police who support us you know and things like traffic and you know special events and stuff they had their own spaces too there's obviously for three administrative people the commander of the silly police has an office and the captain also and you know it's kind of a separate operation but we work cooperatively together talk to me a little bit about that it's a volunteer aspect it's a series of volunteers that you put through police training and then participate in crossings on the houses of worship and July third parade and talk to me a bit about their role they do everything as far as so the special events that July thread as you mentioned Memorial Day Veterans Day doing traffic at the Country Fair mostly community-based things and we find that the applicants for a jury police service will see younger men and women that have an interest in law enforcement they get some training and they're able to you know build a resume and help the community at the same time so it's a good fit this is our coming up here's our credit Asian office so I think a lot of folks chief may not understand what accreditation means but it's probably one of the most impressive important things I've seen happen in the police department I'm in town could you talk to us about accreditation what it is who offers the accreditation in the process that you went through to get in why it's important sure well it's very important we're accredited by the maps credit Asian Commission it was a very long process it took us three years to complete accreditation it's a top-to-bottom review of how you operate on a daily basis it's also a written directive system so all our policies and procedures and everything had to be rewritten and reworked so it fits our operation and utilizes the best practices in the industry these have been tried and tested through courts and and things like that so if you see something that you know you have a question on it's a question is it is did they follow policy and when we break off policy and we and we check in and so that's where it's helpful it's also helpful in respect it provides better service to the community you know it's a quality control if you will to make sure that your call is handled with the same urgency and the same diligence as any other call so it is quality control there's 157 standards it's exacting it was a long process definitely worth the process this is why we're standing in the accreditation office I wanted to make sure that this was part of a structure for the for the remainder you know I don't have probably a few more years to go but I'm hoping that after I leave accreditation remains in foal intact and and I'm sure the next chief would do it so in essence this is the establishment of a series of professional standards across the spectrum of services the police provides and making sure that everyone the department understands what those standards are and it has those standards on a regular basis absolutely so it's up the whole performance of the department and what your expectations are absolutely and there are certain things that come up like that you may not experience you in your career you can go to these directors and say well how do I handle this and just go to the page and this will give you a step-by-step process on how to handle the situation that you may not have had any experience handling in the past so that's what I'm a good benefit of good accreditation job well done okay so and we go up I can show you some more of the renovations you know we have some of the areas where secure we could secure our beauty weapons we have patrol rifles and shotguns in here when they deployed he also comes in for roll call he's assigned this weapon brought to his police cruiser and starts the day patrol rifles are very important that they're very accurate as opposed to a shotgun which is not as accurate as as a rifle so that's have been a good deployment for us and we're back here at the squad room again we also have obviously administrative areas lieutenants and sergeants there are two setups the shift commander is in this office new lieutenant chaplain taking care of the ship today if you want your commander working we also have administrative people that can take the other position at times so talk to me chief about the structure of your department ranks numbers of the officers etc just give us a general overview of the department as it stands today sure we have 63 stops it's done there's one chief that'll be me and then we have two commanders commander Heil America and commander David Avery commander hammelburg does operations so he's kind of more involved with day-to-day operations of patrol and things like that and then commander area is more in the investigative area so he does drug investigations any type of an investigation that we do so those are their two responsibilities that we have lieutenants who will mostly shift commanders like Luke and chaplain here today they run the shift they follow the orders that we send down or you know things that we want them to do whether it's you know enhance traffic enforcement or you know checks on elderly housing or whatever it is they make sure it gets done and so then we below lieutenants the sergeant sergeant officers right here is five of them one for every shift so they're in charge they're the frontline supervisor on every call so pretty much every call of the police go to there is a supervisor on scene so I think that assures quality and make sure that you know we're doing things according to policy how many officers do you have 6262 so talk to me about you mentioned the different ships I think the average person probably doesn't appreciate the schedule that it's an average police officer asks put it on a weekly basis well as you know we're twenty four seven five we don't we never close so we have three shifts 8 to 4 4 to 12 and then midnight to 8 and we also have a fourth shift which is a reeling shift it's called the swing shift and that's two four to twelve and then to midnight eight so there's actually four four four deployments to cover all the shifts throughout the year on an average day how many folks do you have employed or on the street if you will well it depends at night you know I'll have eight in the patrol division I may have three or four upstairs and detectives I could have two a detectives depends on the on the day so that's ten but during the day we might have upwards of 16 or 17 we have people that have go to court to do a prosecution we have detectives obviously in different administrative functions so one of the things that we talked about earlier was the decrease if you will in the overall crime rate there's still plenty of business out there but a lot of it has to do with some of the specialty units that you've added can you talk to us beyond the regular patrol function that there are enough police department provides you've got a number of specialty units whether it's school resource drug gangs that the detectives will devote with other operations be absolutely so that we do have a very active drug drug unit right now and they've been very good as you know the epitope opioid epidemic has been huge throughout the whole region not just for us so we're on top of that we just had a huge arrest of 19 people settled a couple of months ago and that was in large part by our partnership not only with the Randolph Police but with the DEA and another federal authorities that helped us with that investigation we wouldn't have been able to do it on our own and we also enlist the help of other local police departments so also we have a youth violence unit that is concerned it's very concerned with youth violence and gang affiliation they were close with the BOP Boston Regional Intelligence Center which the bric we call it I always have to think about that acronym but so we work very closely with boston & brockton on youth violence issues and and gunfire and things like that so I'm want to top of that also let me do the daily detective work somebody has something stolen or house broken into or what I call the daily regular work we also have a sexual assault unit people that are specially trained they work as detectives also so they're you know they do their thing we also partner with dog which is domestic violence ended in Quincy for victims of domestic violence we have offices in the schools as well so you're close to the schools we do we have two school resource officers one in high school and one in the middle school and that's worked out very very well we're really partnering pretty well as the schools what it says it's a resource and it is a resource for anoleis schools but for the students and you know some kids face a tough life and given the right referral or bring by people and to help them and that's been a successful program I think so one of the most interesting and I think innovative changes in units you brought in is a young gentleman by the name of Larry yeah do we have a chance to meet Larry Tech absolutely he's up in my office you want to take a look yeah come on up so this is my office right here okay this is a Larry that you wanted to see to see you Larry sure it's a therapy dog Larry he started with us last third of July so with one-year anniversary's coming up next week he's a purebred poodle he was I believe that we were the first Police Department the country to employ a therapy dog so Larry some I get calls all the time from Ohio California in Washington state all over the place wondering how we incorporate a Larry into into our operation the Larry's very much a part of department as you can see he's friendly and he goes through a lot of preschools and elementary schools it could great with kids with special needs he's just a really friendly dog it really has a different face to a police department I think that people commonly associate talked to me a little bit about how Larry works towards police community relations well Larry really I mean people ask me um because he sniffer drugs or anything that Larry's not a crime fighter at all Larry's a Louisville that's what he does he likes to interact little kids with seniors where people have just really kind of set and he's intuitive he's friendly and he does brighten people's day so he does a good job right left me a cloth oh boy so and he comes with work pretty much every day with me we've taken them to all the elementary schools I believe and like I say the preschools and community events so everyone knows Larry he has his own Facebook page so Larry's pretty pretty popular in Randolph so this must been quite a challenge his chief not only to run a department this is busy there enough police department but also conduct a renovation of a building that was occupied throughout the construction could you tell me about that experience and how you're able to manage both the department and the project at the same time that was on you know I have to say that was challenging but I first of all have to thank the employees of the of the police department here I mean to go through what we went through in the 13 months they took to renovate this space we went from you know into a very small area with Dustin and heat issues and air conditioning issues but we got we got through it and it was definitely worth it in the end but it was very challenging every day I came in I was dealing with building issues somehow it affected the operation but there was dispatch or you know prisoner processing or whatever it was always something during during the renovation and we just we didn't miss a beat I mean we handled every call handled every investigation and I think that goes to the to the credit of the people that work here I really do it because it was challenging and we had a really good general contractor we have to say they were very responsive to us because we had issues to come up with construction and they were very helpful along the way so page construction was your general contractor he also had vertex as your project manager and also yourself and Brian Howard overseeing apart from the town standpoint yes so talk to me a little bit about the amount of time and probably like this would take to come love well it took 13 months and they were right on actually a little bit ahead of time which was good for us yeah I mean this could have been with a different contract that this could have been a real headache for all of us we were very just very fortunate we got who we got and and that they were so responsive to us so we were able to operate her in the shuffle renovation so changing gears for a second chief this building has a lot of history to it too and I know that you've mentioned that you've been with the department's through the transition into this building so the originally this was the Stetson school get me many many years and then the police station was over at a1 North Street up and then transitioned over here in 1995 yeah right so since 1995 this building was in its current state until the renovation you just mentioned and then was updated some 22 plus years later yeah so the next renovation I'll be probably not here so I wouldn't worry about I think with I think a good forty years in the future I really do I think that you know we kind of designed this with the idea of 100 police officers I think we get to that number I mean because the new model police officers is based on to populate populations I just don't see that type of growth so we can handle you know another 15 another 20 if we need them in the future some future administration needs that I just don't see it I think there's plenty of room here for them and there's plenty of room for expansion also so that was a main idea we didn't want to grow this the first day we moved in and I think that we accomplished that with the renovation so just in closing I want to share your sentiments share my sentence with you in the department that one of the real sources of pride I think of the work that's happening around right now so there in our Police Department under your leadership and what the employees of the department so I certainly appreciate this tour today and I certainly appreciate all that you do for the community so thank you very much thank you very much I appreciate this he again what an exciting tour today was I want to thank Randolph Police Chief Bill pace I want to thank all of the men and women of the Randolph Police Department I want to thank our friends from RCTV for their award-winning work on Randolph in action my name is David Murphy and I want to thank you the viewer for tuning in today thank you [Music] you [Music]

Channel: RandolphCommunityTV

Views: 5,065

Rating: 4.2307692 out of 5

Keywords: randolph, in, action, community, television, tv, chief, pace, david, murphy, william, town, of, manager, public, access, police, station, massachusetts, ma

Id: pAvMn7TpS3E

Length: 36min 41sec (2201 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 13 2017