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Photo by Erin Nelson.
Motorcycles are housed in the garage of the new Homewood Police Department on Bagby Drive.
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Photo by Erin Nelson.
New training classrooms at the Homewood Police Department.
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Photo by Erin Nelson.
Cpl. Scott Zimmerman works out in the gym.
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Photo by Erin Nelson.
The women’s cell block in the jail can now hold up to eight inmates.
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Photo by Erin Nelson.
The Homewood Police Department shield.
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Photo by Erin Nelson.
Capt. Ben Sutton turns a lever as the rows of storage move in what will soon house all of the evidence collected by the Homewood police at the Homewood Police Department on Bagby Drive.
As Homewood Police Chief Tim Ross walks through the hallways of the new three-story, $21.5 million police headquarters, employees stop what they’re doing to wave and say, “Hey, chief.”
It’s a new concept for Ross to be able to see all of his employees under one roof. Before moving into the building in late June, his department was spread out over four buildings across the city.
The new Homewood Police Department building is located at 310 W. Valley Ave. in West Homewood. Right off of the bat, visitors will notice ample public parking, a sharp contrast from fighting for a street parking space at the former headquarters. Then as visitors walk into the new building, they are greeted by people working at the front desks — at the former headquarters, visitors had to pick up the telephone placed in the lobby to speak with an employee.
Past the lobby on the first floor is the E911 room, which answers approximately 60,000 emergency calls a year. The room is much larger than the previous workspace and accommodates six workstations with space to add more workstations in the future. The room has a wall of computer monitors so that employees can watch and listen from any of the building’s 132 cameras. These employees can unlock doors across the building if needed.
Also on the first floor is the Investigations Division, which is where the detectives are headquartered. The division now has its own conference room. A detective’s work involves a lot of collaboration, so they can use this room to meet each other and to collaborate with detectives in other jurisdictions or with other government agencies.
Still, many detectives need privacy, Ross said. Many employees working at the division’s former location needed to share office spaces, and now these detectives have their own private offices. Some of the private offices are larger than what two people would have to occupy at the former building.
“[A detective] might have an assault or rape victim, or a rape victim’s family, or a robbery victim, or a homicide victim’s family on the phone,” Ross said. “They don’t need to be in there discussing all of these things with another detective sitting there who’s not even on the case.”
Also in the Investigations Division is a polygraph room and two interview rooms with one-way mirrors. The previous building only had one interview room, and its one-way mirror was connected to a room that officers used as a makeshift break room.
On the other side of the first floor is the court, which looks much like a TV courtroom, Ross said while laughing. It seats 80 people, which is at least twice as many people as the former courtroom could hold. It has refinished pews in the back that were saved from the former courtroom. The new courtroom is much more user-friendly for the judges, corrections staff and prosecutors, Ross said.
The former police headquarters didn’t have a dedicated break room. This was one of the number one things Ross said he was excited about in the new building. The new break room is on the second floor just as a person steps off the elevators and features windows that almost entirely cover the southeastern-facing wall, allowing employees to sit at one of the many round tables and enjoy their lunch while looking out at the city. There is a vending machine, coffee maker, oven, refrigerator, freezer, microwave and more. The former headquarters only had a kitchenette.
“Once we get this fully operational, we’ll be able to make a meal here if we wanted to,” Ross said.
Next to the break room is the employee lounge, which has a television and cushioned chairs and gives employees a place to relax or wind down before returning home from work.
Ross is also excited about the second-floor gym, he said. Officers now don’t need to work-out offsite or pay for a membership somewhere. The gym includes weights and cardio machines like treadmills and stationary bikes. There are multiple TV screens throughout the room.
Cpl. Scott Zimmerman was taking advantage of the gym during The Homewood Star’s tour of the facility. Previously, he exercised at the Homewood Parks and Recreation building, but he said it’s easier to exercise where he works.
“This is really top notch — I like it a lot,” Zimmerman said.
The former headquarters had about 50 lockers, which wasn’t enough to accommodate every employee. Next to the gym are the main men’s and women’s locker rooms, and there are now enough lockers for every person who works at the police department. Many employees use their locker to store their uniform, their civilian clothes, workout gear or more. There are chargers for their radios and flashlights in each locker. Employees can also use the space to shower or sit down on a bench and put on their boots.
“We tried to think of everything,” Ross said. “The lockers are big and should be able to accommodate all of our guys’ and girls’ gear.”
Training used to take place in its own building on Citation Court, but now it is on the second floor in the same building as the rest of HPD’s operations. The new classroom accommodates 50 people, which is twice the capacity of the previous training center, and it has audio and visual capabilities.
The second floor also holds administrative offices and briefing rooms for the patrol officers and the tactical unit.
The building is on steep terrain, so the third floor has a covered garage that holds a SWAT team van, motorcycles, an ATV vehicle and more. Before the construction of the new building, these vehicles had to be stored in a parking area that wasn’t enclosed.
With the new crime lab on the third floor, HPD will have the ability to test and identify narcotics. This is new for the police department — they didn’t have a crime lab before opening the new headquarters. The room also has a tank that uses a chemical process to lift fingerprints off of objects so that the department can do print comparisons.
Near the crime lab is an evidence storage room. It has rolling shelves with the capacity to even hold large items like bicycles or lawnmowers. The new storage room is able to hold much more evidence than at the previous building, Ross said.
The jail is also located on the third floor and has a carport that connects to the jail. This way, an officer can bring an inmate directly inside to the jail instead of walking the inmate through the front lobby, which had to be done at the former headquarters.
The previous jail had one padded cell, but this jail has two. It also has what Ross calls a “drunk tank.” If an officer raids a party and brings back multiple people under the influence of alcohol, this holding cell gives them a chance to sober up together while the officers process them.
The Homewood jail wasn’t dorm-style before; it was mostly cell blocks. But the jail in the new building has a women’s dormitory with eight beds and a men’s dormitory with over 20 beds. There is also room to add more beds if needed. Each dorm has showers, toilets and kiosks for video chatting with visitors. In between the dorms is a control room where employees can monitor everything that goes on within the jail.
The jail might typically see 10 new prisoners a day. However, because of the COVID-19 pandemic and courts being closed, the jail didn’t have any inmates when The Homewood Star took the tour.
There is an elevator in the jail area that goes directly to the court on the first floor. This way, if an inmate doesn’t make bail and needs to appear before court, that inmate doesn’t have to go through any other part of the building.
“Previously, we did not have the ability to do that,” Ross said. “We had to basically take them through areas where other employees or civilians could be. ... We had one elevator at the old building, and it was shared by everybody.”
Throughout the building are extra spaces for storage and unassigned offices in case the department grows in the future. Ross and Capt. Ben Sutton toured other new police departments when seeking ideas for the new building; when they visited the Vestavia Hills police department, they were told that the Vestavia Hills department felt like they were already outgrowing their new space.
“That’s one of the biggest things we learned from everyone else,” Sutton said. “We turned closets into offices at the old building. We moved our squad room in to create offices —brought in the walls and made the squad room smaller to make offices. We now have storage,and we have room to grow.”
There is also secured parking for employees at the highest part of the property. This way, employees can park around only each other, and not, for example, next to someone with a family member in jail. There is an access point near the employee parking lot where only employees can enter — at the former headquarters, employees and civilians entered through the same front door.
Of all the new, exciting additions, Ross points to the main break room, gym and main locker room as the things he is most pleased with. The building started out larger on paper than what residents can see today, and due to some budget cuts, some plans had to get scrapped. But Ross said he was determined to keep those three things for his employees.
“Offices are offices — big deal,” Ross said. “But those amenities really make the difference in an employee’s experience here on a daily basis.”
