To the Editor:
Suppose you have responsibility for safeguarding 18,000 people 24/7 365 days a year and you have 45 trained professionals to do that work: How would you allocate their time and presence each day? You could divide them into 11-person shifts, but that doesn’t allow for days off, vacation time or absence for illness or injury or for training. Also, you’d need a portion of them to focus on longer-term investigative work as detectives, reducing the number you have available for other highly important purposes including patrol work. That’s what our Wilton Police Department’s leadership faces every day.
For many years, our police officers worked in antiquated facilities designed for a significantly smaller force and a different age that was far less electronically sophisticated. What our department has now, as a result of our town’s very wise long-term investment, is a building elegantly designed to serve its purpose but also eminently practical with nothing in excess and everything fitting together well.
The building’s design is remarkably simple in layout; one can move easily from senior officers’ office space to shift assembly and meeting areas to the detective squad room and secure rooms for evidence processing and storage and for record-keeping and document analysis. Smartly designed features include a car bay with automatic doors on each end that allows suspects brought in by patrol car to be moved easily and safely from the car to the booking and detention areas.
A spacious but simple-in-design reception area includes a private conference room where officers can meet with everyone from crime victims to ordinary citizens coming in for things like fingerprinting for job requirements or for gun permits. No longer do members of the public have to go into areas reserved for those arrested or being detained for questioning as they had to in the old building.
There are functionally attractive officer locker rooms and shower facilities and a weight-and-training room. Nothing is overdone, everything is functional, and there is natural lighting all over in a way that was almost completely absent from the old claustrophobic building.
There is also an attractive meeting room designed for larger departmental gatherings as well as for training program presentations for officers from Wilton and nearby towns. Costly programs offered by private providers can now be offered free-of-charge for Wilton’s officers to attend in return for use of the space. This room has advanced audiovisual facilities and multiple large screens for different simultaneous feeds, which makes it not only an ideal educational and training space but also a great facility for incident command in major townwide emergency situations.
It’s clear that a lot of thought went into planning this building, and it is ideally suited to its purpose. Not only will it work well for our existing officers, but it also demonstrates to prospective officers that the Wilton Police Department is highly regarded and well supported by the community it serves.
And indeed, we as a community have much reason to appreciate and support the work of our police force. We are safeguarded by highly trained officers under very effective command and with a heart for community service. When I’ve seen our officers in action, I’ve been tremendously impressed by their ability to bring calm and perspective to challenging situations that could easily escalate into something far worse if not handled very skillfully.
Wilton’s officers are particularly skilled in that regard. They appreciate the example from the top and model their own conduct on it, and their character reflects the character and approach of its leadership. We are fortunate to have had that perspective, approach and high professional competence in the Wilton Police Department for decades, and it’s been fostered through extensive promotion from within to the highest ranks in the department.
So it’s very fitting that our Wilton Police Department has at last secured a space where its officers can carry out their work of safeguarding our community most effectively. The new police building has definitely been money well spent, with design work carefully crafted to serve needed purposes and well executed in the finished product — something of which we can all be very proud.
Steve Hudspeth