Post Falls Police Have Room To Stretch Lumber Company Donates Building To Ease Cramped Conditions

The growing pains have eased a bit for the Post Falls Police Department.

Some of the 39 employees who filled one cramped police station have now settled into a second home.

“You’re not so cramped, you don’t have so many people coming and going,” said Sgt. Dick Halligan, from his office in the new building at 109 E. Fourth Ave. “We used to have have four people working out of a room half this size.”

The new building, donated by the Idaho Veneer Co., has doubled the department’s space.

The Post Falls Police department moved into its brick building at 101 E. Fourth Ave. in the early 1980s. Only 14 employees worked in the building’s 2,300 square feet then.

But the number of employees has nearly tripled, said police Chief Cliff Hayes. Thirty-nine workers were crammed together until a month ago.

Sixteen patrol officers and their sergeants all shared one tiny office. The interview room sat so close to the detectives’ office that suspects could overhear the officers talking through the walls.

When the Idaho Veneer Co. moved into a new building last year, it donated its old one to the police department.

“Post Falls has always treated us well,” said Leonard Malloy, the company’s CEO. “We just thought, my God, there couldn’t be a better use for the building than for the police department.”

There was only one hitch. The city had to move the building about a mile down the street. That and other costs ran the city of Post Falls about $50,000 - a good deal, Chief Hayes said.

“I think it’s a win-win situation for everybody,” Malloy said.

The detectives, school resource and D.A.R.E. officers, the department’s domestic violence program and the Post Falls prosecutor are now housed in the new building. It sits only a short walk from the old police department.

But the fix is only temporary, Chief Hayes said. He hopes to have the entire department moved into a single site in two years.

Hayes estimates it will cost $3.9 million for a new building. The city is looking for an architect as well as a site.

“Being in two separate buildings is not the best situation,” Hayes said.

Thirteen patrol officers, the reserve officers and animal control still share a cramped room in the old building. The hallway is so narrow two people can not walk side by side.

The department’s evidence room is in a dungeon-like space underneath the building - it can only be reached through a trap door in the floor.

The Post Falls Police Department will hold an open house at its new building on Feb. 28th from 4 to 6 p.m.