From ’90s onward, police station has struggled with space – Norfolk Daily News

Norfolk has experienced a lot of growth in the past 35 years, including the number of police officers and the way the city is patrolled.

We have found ourselves literally bursting at the seams, said Norfolk police chief Don Miller, who spoke at length about the space issues that the Norfolk Police Divisions headquarters has experienced. Millers comments came at an August meeting of the Norfolk City Council.

He noted how the police division has expanded in terms of employees and services. He also described the hallways at the station, where boxes and copier machines continue to pile up.

Norfolks police station was built in 1986 and moved into in 1987.

In 1990, Miller was hired at the Norfolk Police Division and has seen the building throughout the years.

Its always been a little tight, Miller said. When it was first built, it was designed to be economically feasible. They didnt build it for what they needed. They built it for the money they had available.

In the 1990s, the police division saw a sudden growth in numbers in terms of police officers. From that point on, space at the station became a gradually increasing problem.

For the past 20 to 25 years, weve really been noticing our crunch for space, Miller said. Its been a general conversation for all those years.

When Miller became police chief in 2019, he made it one of his priorities to address some of the challenges both with technology and the building itself. The topic of a police station expansion gained traction when Miller took over.

Theres not enough space, and theres only one shower for males, Miller said. For context, males make up a large part of Norfolks Police Division.

The room doesnt have space to do what we need to do. Oftentimes, people will go in there and take breaks and package evidence, Miller said. Sometimes I tell people, youre literally eating at the same place youre packaging drugs at. Of course, we clean it up, but thats still not a smart idea.

We store a lot of our weapons and supplies in that room. Weve outgrown it since theres boxes in the halls because theres no room, Miller said.

Evidence is on the second floor. Thats not a good place to put it since you have to carry heavy boxes up the stairs. Its just best to keep that stuff on the main floor, Miller said. Evidence has taken up many other closets and rooms as well as other storage areas we made available because we need to secure our evidence."

That space has been turned into our new dispatch center, Miller said. We dont have a classroom. Sometimes, well go to the fire station, library or a church thats offered us space.

Theres stuff thats spread out into different rooms because we dont have a proper room for it, Miller said.

The officers workstation is in a hallway. They have a counter on the wall with a bunch of computers, Miller said.

When the building was built, police didnt have a lot of computers. Since it was the 1980s, much of what officers did was handwritten. All you needed was a counter, and by those standards, that was OK.

Currently, the department does not have a proper area for holding juveniles. They can't place them in an adult jail, since they are minors. "There was one juvenile from Omaha whose family took 12 hours to get to Norfolk. They ended up taking a mattress from the jail, placed it in the hallway, had the child sleep on it, and an officer watched over him," Miller said. The new building plan has a juvenile holding center.

Miller also expressed how the exercise and custodial rooms are too small.

Weve just outgrown everything, Miller said. Hallways are lined up with boxes and supplies because we have no space to put them.

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From '90s onward, police station has struggled with space - Norfolk Daily News