A ribbon-cutting ceremony held at the University of Massachusetts Police Department’s new station last Friday marked a new beginning for the University’s police force.
After 38 years of being based in the basement of Dickinson Hall, members of the force now have a new, $12.5 million building to call their own – which was officially dedicated at the ceremony that featured a number of local and University officials speaking about the new facility.
The new headquarters of the school’s police force features 27,130 square feet of space, which is much larger than the 8,000 square feet of space at the former facility. The station is also the home to a new dispatch center, which will help the school police communicate more readily and more accessibly with neighboring police forces such as the Amherst, Hadley and Belchertown Police Departments, as well as the Massachusetts State Police.
“There are five stations that watch over 650 cameras on campus,” said UMPD Lt. Tom O’Donnell of the dispatch center. “We have access here to go back and look, which is helpful in larceny crimes. They are all recorded and kept for 30 days until they eventually overwrite themselves.”
“This building makes us more capable, more adaptable and gives us the capacity to hire more staff – a new dispatch center which will help us improve our radio interoperability with neighboring police departments and the Amherst Fire Department,” added Henry Thomas, vice chair of the UMass Board of Trustees.
Ground was first broken on the new police station in November 2009 and the building of the facility was completed last April.
The new station, located at 585 East Pleasant St., is also the first building on campus to meet Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) standards – a measure that certifies that the construction of the building meets green standards.
“It is continuing the pattern of modernizing the buildings on campus,” said state Sen. Stan Rosenberg, who in the president pro tempore of the Massachusetts State Senate. “It is keeping the growth going. I am hoping it will be the first of many LEED buildings on campus and to reduce our carbon footprint.”
The LEED features of the building include plenty of windows for natural lighting, lights that turn on and off upon entering and exiting a room, and a change in the armory department. No chemicals are used to clean firearms at the facility, only Simple Green and water.
The new building also has a new emergency operations center, which includes a weather map to detect any storms or natural disasters. Alerts of dangerous weather can be sent out to the campus community from the facility through emails and text messages. Alarms located throughout the campus and surrounding area can also be sounded in the case of emergencies, and can give procedural instructions to listeners.
The department’s evidence processing room was also renovated during the move from the old building – not only is there more space for processing now, but rolling shelves, a sink and refrigerator, drying racks in the case of blood soaked items, a finger printing station, and digital cameras are also now part of the evidence inspecting process there. The new room also features wall-to-wall passages – to ensure that evidence does not leave designated areas – and an enclosed garage to hold cars that might be used as evidence in an investigation.
The new police station also includes a gym – which had never been available for just the UMPD – break rooms, offices and holding cells.
“This is a state of the art facility built according to UMass Amherst’s strategic and philosophic goals to itself to create a campus environment that fosters deep scholarship and academic excellence by keeping this campus safe to be an important part of the surrounding community and be an exemplary neighbor,” said Thomas.
“From a student’s perspective, it is very important to have this new police station because the old building was so dilapidated it was embarrassing,” added UMass undergraduate Student Government Association Speaker of the Senate Jarred Rose, who attended Friday’s ribbon-cutting ceremony. “Given that the force is 60-plus I think it just kind of elevates UMass to a new level to show what the police force is doing.”
Dickinson Hall, although no longer the headquarters of the department, is far from abandoned.
“We still have student security there – the student monitors that sign people in at night in the residential halls,” said UMass Police Chief Johnny Whitehead. “They have their meetings at night at Dickinson Hall and then they deploy from there. They’re looking to have some other folks move into that building temporarily. I think the power plant people are moving in while their building is being renovated.”
“We are a separate entity,” added O’Donnell. “Jim Meade [the residence hall security manager] has an office here and an office there. It wasn’t feasible to have students come here and then to Southwest. We were lucky enough to keep some property in Dickinson for them.”
Speakers at Friday’s ribbon-cutting ceremony included Rosenberg, Whitehead, Thomas and Chancellor Robert Holub.
Tours of the new facility – given by officers and lieutenants on the force – followed the ribbon-cutting ceremony into the afternoon Friday.
Also part of the ceremony was the dedication of the new facility’s briefing room to Michael R. Grabiec Jr., a former officer who served the UMass police force for 34 years. The station’s detective room was dedicated to Philip J. Cavanaugh, the former associate director of the UMPD, who served in the department for 40 years.
Felicia Cohen can be reached at [email protected].
