hello everyone i'm joanna jubilance senior multimedia journalist for the belmont citizen herald and wicked local belmont dot com i want to thank you for tuning in today we're going to actually talk about  police station and today's guests really honored to have with me today are the chief of police richard mclaughlin and assistant police jamie mci both jamie and richard have been long time residents of belmont and jamie you told me you've lived in belmont for forty nine years you're raising your family in belmont your youngest is going to be a soft march up in the high school and chief you've lived in belmont for thirty years and raised both your your sons here and i believe you told me that one of your sons we are allowed to say this on the air was was actually truly born in belmont he was born in your bedroom we were able to commission and have a the first feasibility study to take a look at actually what the needs were of the department and the community and that was done as i said in two thousand and eight two thousand it was a major finding that that the building is too small for our current operations and just to give a little history of the building you know at the time when it was built in one nine hundred thirty one i believe the history says there may have been maybe thirty people on the department you know today we have a total of one hundred twelve people that come under the umbrella of the police department grown quite a lot and what that being said as i tell people  current building doesn't owe the town a dime it has it has been served itself right there in the community very well in the department but unfortunately it hasn't kept pace with the times not technology office space needs you know the current building which would be put us in the ballpark or about a thirty thousand square foot building right and and i know everybody knows where the plea and as unfortunately we're on a major intersection with no parking and we're very fortunate that we are able to have the friendship and partnership with the woman's club because they allow us to utilize this space and so there is there's a lot of drawbacks to our current location and i think it's really time yeah that something is done and i know we've talked about it since i've been here ten years we were able to update us feasibility gap did it so it's have the same major findings as two thousand and eight yes  unfortunately there were a couple of locations that were taking off the table back in a way since all were eight but ok so there they've been looking at alternate locations i know one of them was the current location of the library but that's off that it looks like that may be off the table now i am not sure i know they were looking at actually putting the police existing library offices facility not knocking it down not renovating else and this was when the library was happen jamie i would love to hear from you about the major challenges that you face in  all things that are in an area where you shouldn't have to shouldn't be and when you know you run the risk of can having a physical confrontation in that area so i would personally i worry about the prison of booking wanted to leave the station you could have somebody in a situation that might not want to leave it and doing harm and you know rather than leave the station they run to another area of the station and we have no way to isolate people like that is you know i know you toward the watertown from what i can and that's my opinion over the number of years that different things have risen to the top and that have been had to take been taken care of right town town town projects and things like that which currently now we have the high school with us present and but you know when you look around you say you know i remember when i interviewed for the police chief back in two thousand and seven you know when i talked to the board selectmen at the and i said you know what because there was a concern at the time about people leaving that apartment and going elsewhere to cambridge the state police and that's not and i expressed to them you know when they asked me what can you do and i said well you know what i can be really i was really but those are the things you know when you look at it you say you know what i don't want to get to the point we are where a crisis happens and then we have to react to it i want to try i'm being proactive in the sense of let's at least try to what i'd like to do is i'd like to show viewers who may not have had a personal tour of the facility like myself what it actually looks like so thank you you recently game you tour and we're going to cut t my lawn we have to keep people separated by sight and sound obvious we we can keep them separated by sight but not high sound because we don't have a big enough ear and if we go down again so the other side is the female section and as we know today we have seven female officers within our r well that really does give people an idea of what your facility is like and the need for a bigger facility or shore and more modern like the watertown police station which i recently had the opportunity  than the men's bathroom not the men's locker room the men's bathroom and that pose some real problems you know when you have employees that come to work they work you know always shift work and they're tired and they're coming in and out and you know you mentioned we have a gym and downstairs a female officers like to work out and shower and it's really not conducive for that kind of schedule right now that in then the handicapping accessibility of the building you know there's nowhere do we have a public handicap entrance not even an elevator not an elevator no so someone would have a handicap wanted to visit the chief the chief would have to come down to the first floor to me and i don't know we don't have handicapped parking that's the other issue is parking overall i think the they called for was it seventy eight parking spaces and we have a little twenty five or thirty i think in the building right now you know not a lot of land either no very fortunate i mean obviously the conditions that you just saw you know they're very challenging and on a day to day operation and went on the best we can  key piece of that is the employees that we have with us and that work with us and you know you know as i tell people it is what it is what usually you know if you know when you and are taking a tour of our building that's just almost seven years old now we're in the community room here the police station this is a multipurpose room is open to anyone in the community to  use for your cars for meetings whatnot chamber of commerce boys and girls club baseball you hockey other civic organizations use the room quite frequently we also hear the police say she conducted a lot of in house trainings and also we have people from other agencies command to conduct training so multi purpose it's also a voting precinct so now we're in the roll call room of the what is now police station this is the room with the patrol division reports called digital headquarters the buildings equipped with just about every office has a smart coordinate so where in the communications center for the war in conflicts the firemen were similar to belmont i believe where we  keeps track of all the units working and what type of calls a week beyond what their status whether they're clear or tied up this is a handicap level should be needed for someone and then we can bring them up to so this is a report room for the patrol oxygen's whenever they need to come in before or after during a shift to write a report or to check emails etc make phone calls this is the area they would do it on the third ok well you know i time is limited and believe me there's a lot more footage there's a lot more footage of both facilities but we can only show so much in thirty minutes now that definitely shows you what you get with thirty four thousand facility the major capital projects working group is working on some short term solutions are you familiar with any additions and you want to talk about any of them in our in our last few minutes well i'm very interested in some of the points that were safety of the public and the offices that work in it it's not fair to put an officer in a situation where they could have to wrestle with a suspect and in the office they get hurt or the suspect get hurt you know and then have the off to have to explain how it happened and you saw in the pictures of jill's that we have cast iron radiators three feet away from the jail cell doors i mean it's not it's not a far fetched to think someone could you know doesn't while the son doesn't want to be in jail when they're being put into jail and wrestle and get injured on that radiator and we would have to explain how it happened so there was you know for me you know coming up through the ranks when i was in a patrol car i didn't really think too much about the community as we stress to our opposite you know what even go on by the you know in your areas make sure not necessarily the people see but you know people do make note and they can see the cars the police cars going by but what we call in the business of paga tightening making yourself less of a target expressly in the summertime you know if people are going away you know make sure you you know keep lights on let your neighbors know we have a you know you can let us know if you want and we have a book in the office will be directed you know to make sure they keep an extra on the property so we're here to serve and we do have a great community and it's a very safe community i want to thank you both for coming on the show i wish we had more time i want to wish everyone a happy summer and i really hope that next time i have you guys on the show we can talk about the new belmont police but i don't know