May 13, 2024
By Landry Brewer
The Elk City Police Station remodel has begun.
The 42-year-old facility is being gutted, so prisoners stopped being booked there March 11.
Courtesy of a partnership with Sheriff Derek Manning, prisoners are now being processed at the Beckham County jail in Sayre.
Because of the remodel, the ECPD dispatch center has moved to the Buck’s Lodge building at 321 W. 5th Street next to the Elk City Fire Station.
The other police department personnel are temporarily officing in the old City Hall building at 120 S. Jefferson.
The reason that the officers are split between two locations is cost.
“The fiber optic line that connects the Elk City Police Department with the FBI can’t be truncated, because the FBI doesn’t want anybody intercepting those messages,” said Assistant Police Chief John Cook.
So, a new fiber optic line was laid from the information reception tower just behind Buck’s Lodge the short distance to the new dispatch center.
For the dispatch to relocate to the old City Hall on Jefferson, drilling two blocks would have been required to place a fiber optic line that distance, which would have been very expensive.
“It was cost prohibitive,” Cook said.
Police station wear and tear is extensive. Until the recent move, the building had been occupied and used nonstop since it opened, which means the doors hadn’t been locked since 1982.
The remodeled police station will expand about 1,500 square feet, and it will become more functional.
The additional space is badly needed.
According to Cook, the police department had 12 officers when the station was built. Now, the ECPD could employ up to 30 officers to be fully staffed.
In April last year, Elk City voters approved repurposing an existing half-cent sales tax and extending it for eight years to fund police department and fire station expansion and upgrades.
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