Lone cell part of the facilities problem at Tilton police headquarters

TILTON — Officer Elizabeth Murray booked a female shoplifting suspect in a hallway and then locked her in the lone holding cell at the police station last Thursday.

Nobody would design a modern police headquarters with only one cell, no booking room, insufficient air handling, unreinforced walls and windows and a tiny lobby with no public restroom — but those are just some of the issues Tilton officers deal with on a daily basis.

On March 14, Tilton voters will decide whether to raise $4.7 million through bonds to built a new police station to replace the current one, which opened in 1990 at 179 E. Main St. Four previous efforts to pass such a measure have failed since 2006.

In a separate vote, residents of Belmont will decide whether a new police station should be built in their town.

Lobby problem

Tilton Police Chief Robert Cormier said the lobby sometimes gets tight with people whose emotions are running high. The town had 713 arrests last year.

“It’s just really not a secure space, and it’s very small,” he said. “We’ve had domestics here. We had the wife come in to request help from the police and the ex follows her in, or they’re both in here and they are picking up a son who got arrested, and they get into a fight.

“Sometimes it gets really crowded in this little space because you’ll have multiple problems coming in from the lobby looking for help.”

Nearby is a hallway where officers book prisoners just steps away from the cell and an interview room.

“At times you’ll have someone getting booked here but it’s also the main entrance and exit for the employees,” Cormier said. “The new facility would have a dedicated, separate, secure booking room.”

Lone cell

Even in the “Andy Griffith Show” in the fictional small town of Mayberry, North Carolina, there were a couple of jail cells. Here there is one.

By law, male and female prisoners have to be kept separate, so the workaround is that one is placed in the cell and the other is put in an attached bathroom. An interview room is steps away. Voices carry and there’s little privacy.

“There really should be separate cells, especially if there are multiple arrests in a fight situation,” Cormier said. “You are essentially putting the people who were just fighting back in the same space.”

Juvenile detainees can’t be in the vicinity of adult prisoners.

“But we don’t have separate juvenile holding, so if a juvenile gets arrested and brought in here, they would essentially have to watch them in the patrol room; there’s no place to put them,” the chief said.

The tight quarters create safety concerns and pose distractions for members of the community who might have a meeting at the police station when an unruly prisoner is brought in.

Traffic issue

Another safety concern is the station’s location.

“It’s on a blind corner,” Cormier said. “There’s no sight distance, so when people come around the corner, within a matter of a few feet, they are on top of whoever is pulling in or out, so it’s really difficult, especially when you add snow and ice to the equation.”

At last year’s Town Meeting, voters approved an expenditure of $350,000 to purchase a 4.5-acre parcel on Sanborn Road from the Roman Catholic Diocese of New Hampshire to be used for a new police station. They also approved spending $194,500 for project design.

New station

The land for the new station is near the Tanger Outlets. A football field on the property would be re-situated.

Kevin LaChapelle, chairman of the Police Building Study Committee, said that, if voters approve the project, the tax increase on a $200,000 home would be an estimated $83.70 per year.

When the current station was built 30 years ago, Tilton was a sleepy town. Over the years, retail has taken hold in the area, which is served by Interstate 93, including big box retail, restaurants, and an outlet mall.