After years of severely lacking space, Stratford Police Services (SPS) will soon be operating out of two locations.
The SPS has recently entered into a five-year lease agreement at 789 Erie St. That location will serve as an administrative centre.
Stratford Police Chief Greg Skinner told StratfordToday that it is no secret that their downtown headquarters at 17 George St. West is inadequate for the services expected of a modern day police service.
“We've had several consultant reports over the past 20 years that have laid out what the police need to be able to effectively and efficiently provide,” Skinner said. “And so we've been out looking for additional space as an interim stopgap measure to be able to modernize the police service.”
With the new location, frontline policing will still be conducted out of their current downtown headquarters, but back office support and alternate reporting work will be shifted to the new Erie Street location.
For example, members of the public looking for a criminal record check or to request a traffic report would go to the new location. Any operational police matters like reporting a crime or getting interviewed as a witness to a crime would be happen downtown.
Skinner added that there will be little in the form of uniform policing at Erie Street. There will be no cells and no arrests being made there.
“We're not vacating the downtown core,” Skinner assured. “There will still be a strong police presence in the downtown, which I know is important to the public, and is important to council, and I think it is important for our community.”
The SPS is currently completing renovations at 789 Erie St. Barring any major setbacks, the location could be ready by January.
Although a necessary stopgap, Skinner believes that policing should be done under one roof and hopes that happens in his tenure.
“The officers in the community have needed a new police station for a long time … This current facility (downtown) impacts on our ability to be able to put some of those modernization efficiencies in place as quickly as we should be able to.”
Two options are available to police moving forward in regard to the George Street location: renovation or finding a new location altogether.
After attempting to find a suitable secondary location, and being surprised at how little there was in the way of choice, Skinner said that renovation and expansion of the downtown headquarters seems more achievable.
“What we have found through this process of dealing with 789 Erie Street is that there are specific things in the building code that need to be in place to support critical infrastructure for a police station, which makes renovating any other building in the City of Stratford that may be vacant, almost a non-starter for a police station.”
Recently, it was announced that the George St. location may be getting a long-awaited renovation to make accessing the station barrier-free. As Skinner said, that is just one issue that faces the headquarters and there are many more that they will need to address moving forward.
