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After a long construction phase, the new Ponca City Public Safety Center is anticipated to near its completion later this year, with the jail to follow after. The new facility is located adjacent to the old police department building and will house the Ponca City Police Department and Municipal Jail.

Ponca City Chief of Police Don Bohon provided a tour of the facilities to discuss some of the many additions that this new facility will offer.

The new front lobby has bulletproof and blast resistant glass with doors controlled via electronic lock. The front lobby also features video visitation rooms.

The new facility has a room that is a full F-5 tornado FEMA-rated concrete shelter. This room will serve as an Emergency Operations Center (EOC) in the event of emergencies for department heads to coordinate from. This area also contains conference rooms, the Emergency Manager’s office, a bunk room for rest in the event of long shifts such as those experienced during ice storms, and a station for dispatch to be able to operate from if they have to leave their upstairs room.

The building contains a “hoteling” office that can be utilized by another agency to use while on site including the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation (OSBI), Oklahoma Highway Patrol (OHP), game rangers, the Kay County Sheriff’s Office and others.

The administration suite is located on the upper floor and has an access control elevator, meaning it is impossible to reach this area from the lobby without approval from someone in administration. These offices have windows, unlike the older building, the height of these window sills are higher off the ground and have a bottom row of frosted glass as a security feature.

The records archive is kept in this area as well as a conference room.

The current police department has one interview/interrogation room. This new facility will have five rooms. Two downstairs, three upstairs, one of which is a “soft” interview room that has normal furniture and plants for families and witnesses. Every door in the facility is also access controlled and logs who enters a room and when.

Another office will be for an Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs Control (OBN) analyst that is part of the meth task force that the department has signed on with.

Detectives will work from cubicles in a bullpen set up in a large room

(See PUBLIC, Page 2A) upstairs. This area also contains a conference room and an Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) office.

Dispatch will have a greater amount of room to work with compared to their current set up. This includes their own bathroom, break room and lockers. The area was built with the anticipation of the possibility that the state would make all public safety answering points (PSAP) combine into one per county.

The new locker rooms are much larger. When the old building was constructed in 1976, there was only a men’s locker room. Now there is a space for all the employees’ lockers. There are changing rooms that contain showers and a restroom as well.

The main break room for the building has a centralized location and will have microwaves, refrigerators, ice/water machines, chairs, vending machines and a quiet room.

A workout area will also be available to employees at the facility. This one is much larger than the current one used at the older facility.

A large section of the facility has gone to evidence prep and storage. The evidence vault is much larger than the current facility’s and will have two drying cabinets for any evidence that is wet, such as with blood. There will be a stainless steel table to wrap large items and an area to keep fingerprinting powder from going everywhere.

The evidence bank will be closed off with passthrough lockers that can only be opened from the opposite side once something is put within. Only two evidence techs have access to the room, other than the Chief of Police, but only if he talks to one of the techs first.

The evidence locker will include high-density shelving for general evidence. There will also be separate rooms for homicide evidence, drugs and money, and firearms. The department can keep evidence for years until they are released from the District Attorney. Homicide, rape and major beating physical evidence is never disposed of in the event of an appealor challenge. Some of the evidence that the department has it it’s lockers dates back to the 1960s.

The new facility will contain a forensic garage that the department can use to place vehicles that are evidence in a case. This space will allow police to look through an entire vehicle and even lift it off the ground for a full search.

One of the things that the department offers is cleaning for uniforms and plainclothes. The clothing rack is now located at the door and accessible to their cleaning person.

Facility also has a decontamination room and a kennel room for a police dog.

There will be a squad room for shifts to meet, do squad training and contains consumables and equipment for patrols. Nine stations will be set up for officers to do reports, this area will also have an area where they can keep a juvenile while waiting on a parent.

The jail is still currently under construction. There will be an attorney visitation room, a juvenile cell that is sight and sound separated from adults so they can’t be seen or heard. The juvenile cell is also not technically within the actual jail facility.

There are group holding areas for multiple people waiting to go to county, and there is a medical isolation area and storage for the prisoner’s property.

Booking officers are located in the center of the jail and there is a control tower for the cell side.

16 is the max capacity in the day rooms. Each day room has two cells that can hold two people. There is also an exercise room for prisoners to use, one at a time. It will be able to have an opening to allow for natural light, and contains multiplecameras.The Ponca City Public Safety Center is anticipated to be completed before the end of the year.