It's moving week for ASU police, as the department begins to upgrade its systems and move down the road to its new home.
The new station, which will formally open next week, is located on the corner of College Avenue and Apache Boulevard.
"Ideally you want to have a police department that is centrally located," said Cmdr. Jim Hardina of ASU police. "You have to have access to campus for police vehicles, and it will work pretty (well) because of the location."
The current police department building located near the corner of Apache Boulevard and Rural Road was built about 10 years ago and was only supposed to be temporary, he said.
"It's just an old building that we've grown out of," Hardina said. "I'm looking forward to the new building."
The new three-story building was built with the future in mind and the size of the department that they anticipate to have in five years, he said.
"The University is continually getting bigger, adding more people, more students live on campus, so we obviously need to increase the size of the police department," Hardina said.
The department currently has 68 officers and is looking to hire more in the future, he said. They will also be adding more dispatchers and support staff to accommodate the growing University, he added.
The station will include an upgraded dispatch center and radio system, which will allow ASU police to communicate with the Tempe Police Department and all other agencies, Hardina said.
The current communication system between the ASU campuses uses telephone lines that can lose connection during storms, he said.
"With the current radio system we had difficulties communicating from campus to campus, and now that shouldn't be a problem," Hardina said.
Hardina said their goal is to have a closed circuit television behavior recognition software set up around campus that will be able to monitor any vehicle break-ins.
But in order for a closed circuit television to work, the department will also need a person monitoring the camera and somebody to dispatch officers to the scene, Hardina said.
"A lot of people want video cameras in parking lots, but cameras just record crime," Hardina said. "If you really want to prevent crime, you have to have someone watching the camera and someone to respond. Hopefully we'll get that soon."
Another addition to the new police building includes the emergency operation center that will be inside the building instead of at another building on campus, Hardina said.
"If there's a disaster on campus, the police and dispatcher are primarily involved," Hardina said. "It just makes more sense to have the emergency operations center in the police department so all that stuff can be run right from the police station."
The current ASU police station will be torn down and turned into the new Barrett, the Honors College building which is scheduled to be completed by fall 2009, said Kimberly Lerdall, a student services employee.
"They are building a huge residential complex, residential halls, classrooms, dining facilities for honors students and terraces and auditoriums," Lerdall said. "A whole new complex basically."
Reach the reporter at heather.m.turner@asu.edu.
