CHAIN-LINK THINKING
City Police Department ‘finally’ gets new fence
WOONSOCKET — At the urging of Police Chief Thomas F. Oates III, the city has begun erecting a new security fence about the perimeter of the Woonsocket Police Department, enclosing an employee parking area that’s long been a free-range zone for civilian motor vehicles and pedestrians.
Oates said he quickly realized lax security in the wide-open lot was among officers’ top concerns after he assumed command of the WPD – three years ago this week. Determined to cobble together a budget for the $85,000 project, Oates said some of the funding came from unexpended police accounts dating back two years that were redirected to the work with the support of Mayor Lisa Baldelli-Hunt and the City Council.
But the capital infusion that put the project across the finish line, under the stewardship of Capt. Edward Cunanan, was a $25,000 grant from the Rhode Island Emergency Management Agency that he applied for.
The grant is a fraction of what the WPD was initially seeking for a much larger, multi-component effort to beef up security, Oates said, but without Cunanan’s efforts the fence project would not have begun a few days ago.
“Anyone can walk right through here,” Oates said as he led reporters on a progress tour of the project. “We’ve been thinking about doing it since 2016 when I got here, but the grant opportunity came in 2018.”
After the project is complete, civilian visitors will still be able to park their cars in a blacktop nook closest to the lobby of the WPD, accessible from an existing curb-cut off Clinton Street. Deputy Police Chief Michael Lemoine said this portion of the lot is also currently used by a few vehicles assigned to detectives, but the
WPD may relocate those spaces to the newly enclosed portion of the lot to open up more room for civilian visitors.
“It is a small lot, and maybe not laid out the best possible way, but we’re trying to make the best possible use of it,” he said.
The fence, however, will enclose the balance of the lot, which will be accessible only by passing through either of two new, motorized gates, controlled via an automated handheld fob system. One of the gates is a custom-design job, made to fit an existing curbcut on Worrall Street. This will be a “guillotine-style” gate that lifts up and down, like an entire section of moving fence affixed to a mechanical arm.
The contractor farmed out the gate – known as a vertical pilot lift system – to AG Autogate System of Berlin Heights, Ohio.
The other gate will be located at the site of a new curb cut directly adjacent the existing one on Clinton Street. This gate will move across the entryway on a track system, similar to a sliding door.
The contract was awarded to lowest bidder for the project, Citiworks Corp. of North Attleboro, at just under $73,000, Oates said. The next lowest bidder offered to do the job for about $106,000, and another company’s price was about $130,000
The balance of the project costs involve the relocation of some underground electrical cables. Led by Department of Public Works Director Steve D’Agostino, highway division laborers excavated trenches for this portion of the job, cutting costs substantially, Oates said.
“It would have been more more expensive to do without the in-house work that they provided,” Oates said.
The welded steel panel fence is made in prefabricated sections by Ameristar of Tulsa, Oklahoma. With perpendicular verticals spaced about six inches apart between the posts, the fence is secure, but not at the expense of aesthetics, Oates said.
“It’s decorative,” he said. “You want to make it secure, but you don’t want it to look like a prison compound, either.”
A police officer for 47 years, the former second in command of the Providence Police Department said there are many ways in which the lack of a fence raises troubling security issues for the WPD.
Despite the fact the lot belongs to a police station, and there are usually a fair number of law enforcement personnel on hand inside the building, cars parked there are not immune from vandalism and theft. In fact, the chief said, there have been a repeated incidents of vehicular-related crime in the lot over the years.
A fenceless lot is also an unnecessary temptation to prisoners who are being escorted into the building through the sally port of police headquarters. The entryway for prisoners who are being led to the booking area is accessible from the parking lot. It’s much more inviting for a prisoner thinking about making a run for it to actually give it a try in a parking area that isn’t encircled by a fence, Oates says.
Also, the chief said a portion of the parking lot is also used to store vehicles forfeited as the proceeds of crime. Technically, forfeiture vehicles are evidence and sometimes they’re not searched by the police for possible contraband until after they’re seized. But evidence that isn’t secure may not end up particularly useful in court, especially in the hands of a savvy defense lawyer who could make an argument that it’s been tampered with.
In the recent past, the freely accessible parking lot has also been the location of some unwanted confrontations at the hands of organized provocateurs – like the First Amendment Audit and similar groups. They make it their business to “test” the response of police officers for compliance with the First Amendment by engaging in conduct purportedly protected by the free-speech clause of the U.S. Constitution, such as photographing the interior of police vehicles.
Police officers in scores of jurisdictions around the country have been videotaped responding to such actions during the last several years. It happened in the parking lot of the WPD most recently in December 2018, with the resulting video appearing on YouTube.
If all goes according to plan, the fence project should be complete in a few weeks, according to Oates.