A new-look police station in Suffolk has officially been opened - even though it never closed!

Halesworth Police Station remained fully operational throughout a major refurbishment project which has seen it transformed into a modern facility for the 21st century.

The £1.35 million re-development has seen the station, opened back in 1970, completely refurbished, with the top two floors of the building being converted into a fully-integrated, modern Scientific Services suite.

In the early days of its life, Halesworth Police Station accommodated divisional headquarters staff, operational officers (both traffic and patrol) and was the venue of some residential training prior to the opening of the current Force Headquarters at Martlesham Heath.

In more recent years, however, the building has not been used to its full potential.

This was recognised - and a team was assembled to look at re-developing the building to bring new benefits to the force.

Before the builders could start their work, more than two years were spent making sure everything was right. A feasibility study and consultation with staff were carried out.

Suffolk Constabulary's Assistant Chief Officer Jerry Goddard, who oversaw the project, said that the refurbishment was a positive step forward.

"Everything about the project is bringing benefits," he said.

"Before moving to Halesworth, our scientific services staff were working in accommodation at Force Headquarters which was no longer suitable.

"They simply did not have the room for all the specialist equipment they now need to do their jobs - and various sections of the unit were on completely different floors."

"Now, they have the spacious, modern accommodation they require, making use of space in a building which was under-used.

"At the same time, the project has allowed us to improve the rest of the police station, creating a much more pleasant working environment for staff.

The £1.35 million refurbishment of the station was carried out by SEH French Ltd. The architects were Suffolk County Council.

The station now accommodates more than 75 members of staff. As well as the new Scientific Services, it is home to:

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Other Staff…

Part of the first floor is home to the Eastern Area administration team, who complete all kinds of tasks in finance, personnel and support. Also housed here are Community Safety staff - a Partnership Manager who oversees work between police and other agencies, such as local councils, and a Detective Sergeant, who has responsibility for Crime Reduction Officers in addition to other community safety work.

The Eastern Area intelligence unit is also based in the building, dealing with everything from crime allocation and analysis to intelligence gathering. Other staff at Halesworth include the Eastern Area Training Officer, Firearms Enquiry Officer and Press Officer along with maintenance and service personnel.

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SCIENCE: A KEY ROLE IN POLICING

Suffolk Constabulary's new Scientific Services Unit forms the centrepiece of the new-look Halesworth Police Station.

Science is helping recover more and more of the evidence that links offenders to their crimes - whether through fingerprints or DNA traces.

The unit occupies the top two floors of the refurbished station - and the investment in it underlines the key role science can play in the Suffolk First initiative, which aims to make the county the safest in the country by 2006.

The new facilities replace old accommodation at Force Headquarters, Martlesham Heath, which was no longer suitable.

But investment has not been restricted to just bricks and mortar. Extra staff, including Scenes of Crime Officers and fingerprint experts, have been recruited too, bring the total number of posts to 48.

More staff means more crime scenes are now being visited than before - 12,640 last year - with more vital evidence being recovered.

Scientific Services Manager Jim Burzio said that the new unit at Halesworth meant that the Constabulary was now better equipped to meet increasing demand.

"Under our Suffolk First campaign, one of the key aims is detecting more crimes and these new facilities will help us push the force even further forward," he said.

"We are going to more crime scenes and sending more samples for testing. We're getting more fingerprint hits and more DNA hits, and often these are crucial to the criminal justice process."

Science in today's police work generally begins when a Scenes of Crime Officer visits a location where a crime has taken place. He or she will be looking for tiny clues or tell-tale traces which could help solve the crime.

The Constabulary has a total of 23 SOCOS, split into three teams based in Bury St Edmunds, Ipswich and Lowestoft. They are headed by the Principal Scenes of Crime Officer, who is based at the new Halesworth unit.

They are kept busy. Between April and September this year, they attended 2,000 burglary scenes and 1,500 vehicle crime incidents, collecting finger marks, DNA material and footwear marks, in addition to completing additional forensic work at other crime scenes and photography at injury and fatal road traffic accidents.

All of this material has to be examined, catalogued and analysed - and the new Unit at Halesworth provides the facilities to carry out much of this work.

The Fingerprint Development Laboratory processes fingerprint lifts, photographs or items for chemical treatment submitted by Scenes Of Crime Officers.
Processed prints can then be input and checked against the National Automated Fingerprint Identification System (NAFIS), a computerised system which holds around six million sets of fingerprints and marks filed from undetected crimes.

The prints also have to be stored and maintained at the unit itself - which has far more storage area than the accommodation occupied by staff back at Force Headquarters.

"Staff are very pleased with the new facilities at Halesworth," said Mr Burzio. "Fingerprint identifications are already up on the target set for this year and when we are fully up and running it will be higher still and the turnaround time should be quicker."

Prints and marks can be taken from materials ranging from paper to polythene bags, thanks to a range of treatments, which often have to carried out in specialist conditions to ensure that the chemical processes involved work correctly.

"At the old unit, we could only do one test at a time," says Mr Burzio. "But our new facility base a multi-treatment functional area which allows us to do many different things at the same time."

A floor below the fingerprint lab is the DNA Administration section, which provides DNA samples taken from prisoners and crime scenes in Suffolk for the National DNA Database - which now holds over two million samples.

Building up the database remains a priority - and the Home Office and forces nationwide will spend over £56 million this year on expanding it, with Suffolk spending more than £600,000.

The Home Office has funded a number of posts to help progress this work, including DNA clerks, Scenes Of Crime Officers and forensic analysts.

At the old unit, DNA Administration shared premises with Photographic Imaging. The move to Halesworth has given the two sections separate locations, with benefits for both.

All photographs taken by Scenes Of Crime Officers or other police staff, such as prisoner photographs from custody, are processed by the Photographic Imaging section.

It provides photographic albums for the investigation of crime cases and for court purposes and photographs all marks developed by chemical means by the Fingerprint Development Laboratory.

The small team will also undertake specialist photography at crime scenes, using techniques including the use of quaser laser light to show up latent finger marks by fluorescence and spray patterns using Ultra Violet light sources.

The new facilities at Halesworth, and the additional investment, has allowed the section to further progress into the digital age. It has a new mini-lab which uses touch screen technology top produce conventional prints from all kinds of media, digital or analogue, including different video, DAT and photography formats.

Digital video cameras are now being used for evidence gathering - and trials are underway which will see SOCOs move over to digital photography in the near future.

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