The Manchester Police Department will begin moving to its new location next week and they’ll have about twice the square footage and room to grow.
The new, three-story police station is an austere structure made more interesting by a smattering of different-sized square windows. The building is part of a new inner-city municipal complex. Besides the police station, it has modern buildings for the Highway Department, a new salt shed and a fleet maintenance garage. The complex has a price tag of about $43.5 million.
Manchester Police Chief David Mara says the 220 officers and staff who used to devise schemes to share locker space will have much more room to work.
“Before it was a very small area where desks were crammed together and there was no place to put anything. Everything from files to books to officers’ personal belongings.”
Not only is the new building spacious, with countless conference rooms and offices, it also boasts some new crime lab technology. For instance, a new fingerprint fuming tank replaces an old aquarium that evidence technicians retrofitted to raise prints.
Mara says the evidence room got a big upgrade as well.
“Now what would happen in our old evidence vault, if you went in there, we had bails of marijuana in there and it’s a pungent smell. You’d go in there and your eyes would water so at least now we have that all in one place.”
Patrol division will be the first wave of staff to move in on January 3rd. The transition is expected to be complete a few days later. The building is named after fallen Manchester police officer Michael Briggs. The old station will be auctioned off for an estimated profit of about $1.5 million.