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West Valley City shows ‘maturity of city’ with debut of $25M police building

Posted at 10:11 PM, Oct 15, 2019
and last updated 2019-10-16 00:11:38-04

WEST VALLEY CITY, Utah — West Valley City debuts new police digs with multi-million dollar facility — giving them their first adequate police headquarters since the city’s inception.

Taking a step into the new West Valley City Police headquarters is like entering a new, high-tech world.

“This is so much better, nicer,” city manager Wayne Pyle said.

The $25 million, three-story, 66,000 square-foot building sits in the heart of downtown, located at Fairbourne Station at 3575 Market Street.

The space is equipped with “everything you can think of from a public safety or police function,” including holding cells, interview rooms, cubicle farms, evidence storage and handling areas, a forensics lab and not one, but two ways to test ballistics.

“It goes down to 50 yards,” said WVCPD Deputy Chief Robert Hamilton as he stood at the end of the ballistic shooting range.

“This is one of three of our ballistic recovery tanks in the state,” Hamilton continued as he moved into a new room.

Each resource allows officers to further their investigations involving shots fired.

“We generally have several shootings a week,” Hamilton said. “Just this week we had three or four shootings, so we’ll go out, process those scenes, collect any evidence we can, any bullets, any shell casings, bring them in here and be able to do a forensic analysis on those.”

If you head upstairs, you’ll find another cubicle farm and a full workout room.

“Just about anything you can think of that you’d want to do from a public safety standpoint,” Pyle said.

The city said building this officers’ playground didn’t happen overnight.

“From planning, to demo, to acquisition, to funding, to construction, it just seems like a long, long time,” Pyle said.

WVC said since their inception 40 years ago, they’ve never had an adequate space for police work.

“At one point [the police department] was in the basement of City Hall, after that it was in this second, third generation office building that wasn’t really built for a police department," Pyle said. "It’s been needed from a growth and expansion standpoint."

They believe the shiny, new space marks a well-deserved milestone for West Valley City, which serves 135,000 residents and is Utah’s second-largest city.

“This facility almost marks a maturity of the city,” Pyle said. “This facility was built, funded and designed for the specific and expressed purpose of carrying out our public safety functions, which the city has never had before.”

To mark the building's debut, WVCPD displayed motorcycle unit skills, had bagpipes, a flag ceremony, public tours, and a ribbon cutting, followed by food trucks provided for the public.

The building sits next to a new seven-story parking garage, which should be completed soon, with a sky bridge that connects to a nine-story office building, set to be completed in 2020.

Due to extensive planning, the city said they were able to complete this multi-million dollar facility without raising taxes.

WVCPD will start moving into their new space on Wednesday.