DES MOINES – The Des Moines Police Department knows that it won’t be able to stay in its current location forever. And after Monday night’s city council meeting, they know that it’ll be a priority for the city in the not so distant future.
“Our current building, size-wise, is not adequate,” said Sgt. Ryan Doty of the Des Moines Police Department. “It’s 100 years old, so obviously, there’s some technological advances over time.”
City leaders saw the need that the police saw, voting 5-2 to give the city manager the ability to begin working with the EPA and DNR to evaluate the readiness of the old DICO site.
“They had a lot of criteria to check for it,” said Christine Hensley, a Des Moines city council member. “This is a green light to move forward with these properties for things like soil testing.”
“It’s going to be a drawn out process,” said Doty. “We want to make sure that it goes through, that it goes through right.”
The department whittled down its choices from 15 sites to 5, with the main focus on the old DICO site, which has been an eyesore and hazard for the city for decades. It would allow the police to put all their units under one roof. Plus, it could be shared with the school district.
“I would look at it as a placeholder for development,” said Hensley.
This project isn’t in the city’s capitol improvement plans, so it’s at least five years down the road.
But until then, police say they’ll adapt.
“We’re not complaining, and we’ll contiue on, even if this doesn’t go through, but would be nice to have our growing department keep up with the growing city,” said Doty.
