The new IFPD complex is set to open in eight months. Here’s a preview of what’s inside.
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IDAHO FALLS – Fifteen months into construction, the Idaho Falls Police Complex hosted the media for a tour of what will become a one-stop shop for community members seeking help from law enforcement.
Idaho Falls Police Chief Bryce Johnson showed EastIdahoNews.com the new complex that spans over 96,000 square feet between the two buildings.
This is compared to the 25,000 square-foot space the IFPD currently has spanning nine locations, including the Law Enforcement Building on Capital Avenue, which is shared with the courthouse. That area does not include shared spaces such as the courthouse lobby where multiple agencies operate.
In March 2022, the Idaho Falls City Council awarded the $30 million project bid to Ormond Builders. The new complex is expected to be completed early next year and be fully operational by April 1.
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“This won’t be another non-descript brick building downtown that you have to go and try to find a police officer at,” says Idaho Falls Police spokeswoman Jessica Clements. “Right now, it can be frustrating if you have a meeting with a police officer, you come to one building if you need to see the chief, and you go to another building if you need to see a detective. With this building, we have one stop and everyone that you need to see is right here.”
The Auxiliary Building
Starting the tour, Johnson showed off the smaller auxiliary building, explaining the space will be used for a mat room to practice hands-on training. There is also office space for the SWAT team, explosives bomb squad, a mobile force team, and a vehicle storage room.
“Ninety-nine percent of the supports that police use are actually hands-on. Handcuffing, stuff like that, so this will be a training space dedicated to that,” said Johnson. “We will have mats on the floor, mats up on the side, and they can use them all the time. We have mats we use right now. We pull them out, set them up, and put them away, then we put them back up and put them back away.”
The Police Complex
In the larger complex, Johnson described that the bottom floor will be used as space for the K9 officers, brand new interrogation and polygraph rooms, patrol offices, and a new crime lab.
“This is all crime lab area, the criminal scene investigation, it’s where we’ll do all of that. This is the vehicle bay area, so we’ll be able to bring evidenced cars in here. There will be a lift here, so we can get underneath them and process vehicles for evidence,” said Johnson. “There is a room for all of our equipment (and) our superglue machine that finds fingerprints. We’ve got a lot of good equipment for evidence processing that will all go in here.”
The interrogation and polygraph rooms will be primarily helpful for the department. According to Johnson, the current police interview set-up does not allow for good policing.
“Our current interview and interrogation room has a window in between it, and you can hear what’s going on between the two. I don’t know if you’ve watched many police movies, but when you have two suspects, you don’t want them to be able to look at each other and hear what they’re saying. That’s just not good police practice,” says Johnson. “They’re just not designed for modern policing, and the new ones are designed for how we try to do policing, and yes, we think it’s going to help us with all crimes.”
The first floor will also house a large area for evidence storage, more training space, a public entrance, a room dedicated to conducting internal investigations, and a wellness room to promote physical and mental health for all employees, specifically officers.
“Part of what police officers do is the physical job,” says Johnson. “We expect them to be healthy, we expect them to be able to do their job, so we will have some exercise equipment for that in here.”
For those on the investigative side of policing, having an area to store evidence is one of the most exciting parts of the new complex. According to Johnson, the current evidence storage is full and requires officers to find a way to get rid of a piece of evidence before entering a new one.
“Right now, if you check a piece of evidence in, we have to get rid of a piece of evidence. If you haven’t been in our current evidence room, it is amazing how they stuff everything in there,” says Johnson. “Being able to have enough space for evidence and a crime lab space it’s so much of a difference from what we have. It’s incredible. We’re super grateful for all of the work that’s been done.”
According to Johnson, not having the storage space needed to examine all evidence of a case makes it much harder to solve.
“If you remember back to the Stephanie Eldridge case, that took us a long time to solve, and one of the reasons is that we literally couldn’t pull all of the evidence out and look at it at once. There just wasn’t a spot to do it,” said Johnson. “You can’t pull it out on the grass in front of the police department and put the evidence out. We just didn’t have the space to pull it all out. This will fundamentally change the ability for us to do our work.”
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The second floor will include the administrative offices, the investigative area where detectives will work, the computer crimes department, and a Faraday room to keep those suspected of deleting crime evidence from their electronics from doing so.
“You know how if you’re on your iPhone, you can wipe it remotely? And if you have evidence of a crime on your iPhone, that’s really not good for us because we don’t want people to wipe their evidence,” says Johnson. “So the Faraday room prevents people from destroying evidence if we’ve seized it or done a search warrant from it.”
Johnson says having enough room to place a computer crimes department is essential due to the overwhelming amount of electronics involved in nearly every crime case.
“The profession has changed so much. Now everyone who commits a crime has a cell phone, and they live stream themselves while they’re doing it. Almost every case has an electronic device attached to it, it’s just the world we’re in,” says Johnson. “We have a dog now that just goes and sniffs out electronics. People take lights out and hide things in them because of all of the evidence of their crimes, whether it’s sexual exploitation, drug crimes or fights, they’ve got it on their cell phone or their iPad. So when we serve search warrants, we’re almost always seizing those.”
Community relationships
Johnson hopes the community will feel more comfortable engaging with police with a non-secured area to interview members of the public who don’t want to go through a metal detector and bag search scenario.
“If someone wants to come and talk to the police right now, we’re co-located with the courts, and courts are set up differently. When you want to go to courts, the first thing you get greeted with is an armed deputy, and you’re going through a (metal detector and bag search),’ says Johnson. “Now, you’ll be able to come to talk to the PD without going through all of that, and for a lot of people, for whatever reason, whether they don’t trust the police or they’re skeptical of the police, they just don’t want to”
With the complex expected to open in less than eight months, Johnson says they are excited to build some positive momentum for the department and the community.
“We’ve been bringing different employees and staff members through the building, our evidence tech is super excited to get in that new space,” says Johnson. “The records people are excited, the detectives who’ve been thorough here they’re excited about it, we’ve got a lot of positive momentum, it’s a really great move for us, it really is.