Chesterfield Police Department Upgrades Approved

The Chesterfield Township Board of Trustees on Monday approved spending about $15,000 on renovation projects at the.

The board allotted about $3,000 to buy a dog kennel for the department. Police Chief Bruce Smith told board members that the purchase is necessary because the current kennel used by the department is not effective and needs to be replaced.

“We have dogs in our building sometimes every day of the week,” Smith said. “These units are not that strong; it’s like one large kennel and sometimes we have multiple dogs in there and we want to be able to keep them separated.

“Recently, we’ve had two escapes in the building … it’s become a point that it’s dangerous to our employees and dangerous to the people around the building and we need to get some stronger kennels," Smith said.

The board also allocated about $6,500 for the department to complete renovations to the server room and radio room, and $5,500 toward the renovation of the station's exterior.

“We have to get radios replaced because of the dust that accumulates in there and the same with the computers; our station camera system, we had to have that rebuilt several times because of the dust problems and it also creates issues with our servers,” Smith said. “It’s all our data for our police reports and our fire reports; it’s a critical part of our building.”

Smith told board members that the exterior of the building has problems with water leakage and needs to be repaired.