Maricopa Police Department this morning cut the ribbon at its new 32,200-square-foot police station at 18135 N. Park Plaza. 

It’s more than double the size of the old facility next door that was MPD’s headquarters until next Wednesday. 

“Can you believe it?” Mayor Nancy Smith asked a crowd of dozens of residents, dignitaries and city staffers. “It was just over 15 years ago when we hired our first chief of police.” 

Smith described the new facility as an “exceptional space” for dispatchers and police and touted it “was built debt free.” 

The old station, built in 2013, will be serve two new purposes. 

“Half of that will be a theater, half of that would be an incubator space for new businesses,” Smith said. 

MPD Capt. Stephen Judd reminisced about how far the department has come. 

“We found ourselves working out of construction trailers that were pushed together to resemble rooms and offices,” Judd said of the department’s start in 2007. “We were riding high as a department at that time with two admin trailers, a property and evidence trailer, a patrol trailer, which I thought was a holding facility, a report-writing area and a break room. We handcuffed our guest to a bar next to where we wrote reports.” 

After speeches, Smith and Police Chief Mark Goodman cut the ribbon. Residents toured the building with police volunteers. It looked very different compared to the last time InMaricopa reporters visited. 

“I think one of my favorite parts of the new station is the ability to have our force simulator here on site,” Goodman said. 

The VIRTRA simulator, which mentally prepares officers to use force, was offsite at Central Arizona College’s Maricopa campus. It has since been moved to its own room in the new station. 

It was maybe the most exciting part of the tour. Watch a video of how it works here. 

“Now that it’s here, in-house, in the building, it’ll give us a lot more flexibility to be able to pop in and do some scenarios with our officers and then to evaluate their performance, do some learning, and then go out into the field and apply those lessons,” Goodman said. 

The new station also has a sallyport, offering officers a place to search vehicles in-depth that are not on a street or in a parking lot. 

“If we need to process a vehicle evidence-wise, we can bring it into our secure facility,” Goodman said. “It’s climate controlled so we can really take our time looking for evidence inside a vehicle.” 

Police staff will move into the new station Wednesday and Thursday. Goodman said he hopes 911 dispatchers will be moved into their new headquarters within the station in September but said “Motorola is a little bit behind on delivery,” so an exact date isn’t set. 

“We’re putting in all new state-of-the-art dispatch stations for our people,” Goodman said. “As soon as we get them over here, we’re going to be super excited because I’ll no longer have to drive down to [the Copper Sky substation] to interact with our dispatchers.” 

Goodman said it’s important that all of the pieces that put together the MPD puzzle are together because “without our dispatchers, records people, property and evidence people, we wouldn’t be able to function.” 

“It’s a huge milestone, not only for the department, but for the city,” Goodman said.  “The difference is huge and it’s amazing, and we’re just really excited about starting this new chapter that is going to allow us to serve the community even better than we already do.”