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Independence voters will be asked to sign off on $123 million as part of a Public Safety GO Bond to construct a new justice center, including a new police headquarters, in April.
The Independence Police Department, which has more than doubled since the existing building was constructed in 1973, has outgrown the space.
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Aging Independence PD headquarters rife with infrastructure issues
But the more pressing issue is the deferred maintenance and water-intrusion issues, according to Chief of Police Adam Dustman.
“We are averaging — sadly and disgustingly — a main sewage line break every six months,” Dustman said Friday as he gave KSHB 41 News Reporter a tour of the building. “We’ve had three in the last 18 months.”
Dustman pointed to stained and damaged ceiling tiles inside the IPD Records Unit on the ground floor of the department’s headquarters, which is located at the southwest corner of Noland Road and East Truman Road on the east edge of Independence Square.
“This was built the same year that Arrowhead Stadium was constructed,” Dustman said. “You think about how many renovations (the stadium) goes through — and it’s used eight times a year for football games, or nine or 10 with playoff games, I guess, and then some concerts here and there and some soccer games. That’s about it. This (headquarters building) is used 24/7 365 days and has been for the last 51 years now.”
Despite two roof replacements and additional repairs totaling more than $1.2 million, water still pours through interior walls building up deposits on electrical conduits and pipes throughout the building.
Unable to isolate the building’s water issues, a massive drip pan was installed inside the men’s locker room in the basement of the building in 2017.
“This drop pan that you see — it kind of looks like ductwork, but it’s just a pan,” Dustman said. “It’s a collection pan — and the thought process behind it was that it would collect the water that’s coming in and it would evaporate before it ever overflowed or escaped the pan. Obviously, that’s not happening as you can see the walls and you see the welds.”
It’s a dangerous and, at times, disgusting circumstance for one of the region’s largest police departments, which is why the Independence City Council voted in December to put a new headquarters on the April ballot.
“We all feel like we have to get our police employees out of this building,” Councilwoman Heather Wiley said. “It’s unsanitary, it’s unsafe, it’s not secure, so that is something that has to happen immediately.”
IPD has more than doubled from roughly 150 employees to more than 330 sworn officers and civilian staff during the last half-century.
“We’ve outgrown the footprint here and we’ve used every square inch of this facility to try to reimagine fitting different functions into things like closets and doubling up trip, tripling up, quadrupling up on office space to try to fit things in so that they can share workspaces,” Dustman said. “It’s become untenable.”
The department’s ranks are expected to continue to swell with more hires expected after voters approved Prop PD, a sales-tax increase passed last August that provides millions for pay raises and hiring more officers.
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“Recruitment and retention are big, especially in today’s day and age in policing,” Dustman said. “Attracting and retaining good quality, talented individuals to come out and serve the community is important, and what they see and what they feel when they come to work is important.”
Some previous remodeling work under former Chief of Police Brad Halsey drew controversy for overtime paid to officers who performed the costly work, which wasn’t bid through proper channels.
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Among other issues with the current headquarters is the reality of a more diverse police force than when the building was designed, as the women’s locker room makes clear.
The men’s locker room, with 120 lockers and a handful of toilets and showers, is too small for the department’s needs, but it’s sprawling compared with the women’s locker room facility, which has 21 lockers in a cramped space.
“They have one shower, two toilets and not even close to enough locker space,” Dustman said. “It really is substandard when we talk about creating an environment that is equal or capable even of performing and being available for our female employees. It’s pretty despicable.”
If voters sign off on the Public Safety GO Bond — which totals $130 million, including $4 million to demolish the existing building and another $3 million to purchase the Jackson County Animal Shelter, which the city operates despite the county owning the building — IPD will take over the Independence Power and Light building at East 23rd Street and South RD Mize Road.
The current IPD headquarters is approximately 60,000 square feet. The department’s K9 and Special Operations Units are housed at a separate location and training exercises take place in a cramped conference room off the building’s main lobby.
The new justice center would be 176,000 square feet, which includes 50,000 square feet for a new municipal court building that would be above a new and expanded municipal detention center.
“When we need to have cross-functional collaboration — so you think about an operation that involves the SWAT team; maybe our K9 unit; our investigative elements, both overt and covert; other programmatic elements and functional needs from the department like analysis, records, detention — all those things collaborating at once, we don’t have a space to bring all of those units together,” Dustman said. “It may seem minimalistic to think about driving somewhere and trying to have some cohabitated space where people can collaborate, but it does have an impact.”
The new campus would include a 30,000-square-foot training center, which would bring all departments to the same location to streamline training, with the remaining 96,000 square feet devoted to the department’s day-to-day operations.
“Right now, we adapt and overcome because that’s what we do, but it’s challenging,” Dustman said. “From an oversight and a managerial perspective, it makes it difficult when you have managers and supervisors that don’t necessarily colocate with their functions that they’re responsible for.”
IPL and other city offices will relocate to the former GEHA building near Interstate 70 and Little Blue Parkway later this year.
“This is an issue that’s going to get worse the longer we wait,” Wiley said. “It’s already costing us a lot of money and the longer we put this decision off, put this solution off, the more expensive it’s going to become.”
Dubbed IndeGO Bond 2025, the city council placed three general obligation, or GO, bond issues totaling $197 million on the April ballot.
The Public Safety bond is the most expensive ($130 million). There is a separate $55-million bond for roads, bridges and sidewalks and a $12-million bond question for renovating and improving the city-owned athletic complex and historic sites.
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