Rockville Centre police force settles into new $7M headquarters

Village of Rockville Centre police are settling into a new home that provides them with the technology and safety features a modern department relies on, officials said as they held a ribbon cutting recently for the new space.

The 58-member force moved into the Maple Avenue headquarters, formerly a storage area for the village water department, on June 1. Delayed one year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, village officials said the effort is now mostly complete. It’s the culmination of a $7 million renovation and relocation project that began in 2018.

The move from the old headquarters just a few blocks away, which housed the department for 45 years and hadn’t been updated since 1993, brings the 129-year-old department into the 21st century.

The equipment in the communications room has been upgraded, the armory is larger and fitted with proper ventilation units, and what village police commissioner James Vafeades described as a “fitness closet” in the old space is now a proper workout room for officers to stay in shape. Three modern holding cells occupy the lower level of the building. Safety and security is the focus, the commissioner said.

One of the most important upgrades is a new training room, where twice each day the sergeants do roll call with the officers who staff the department’s five patrol posts.

Vafeades said he had a clear vision of what the department needed in a new space, but he still toured other recently constructed precincts in Nassau and Suffolk counties, and elsewhere. On a trip to Texas, where he said he toured five new police stations of similarly sized departments, the commissioner got the idea for bulletproof glass and walls around the front desk.

Francis Murray, the village mayor since 2011, said the headquarters move was funded by taxpayers through the village’s operating budget.

“Due to the growing needs and changes in policing in New York State and Long Island, our board recognized that they needed a new, modern facility,” said Murray, who also noted the department has expanded by six officers during his tenure.

On a 98-degree day this past summer, Murray said he moved a wedding to be held in a gazebo nearby to the new headquarters so the couple could get out of the heat. They married inside the new police station, even posing for pictures in the holding cells.

Village administrator Nancy Howard said officials hope the rest of the community feels as welcome in the new headquarters. She said tours are often given to Cub Scouts and other community groups. 

“As much as this building was built with safety and security in mind, it also has a warmth to it,” Howard said. “It’s for the community.”

The new headquarters also features reminders of the department’s past. A tribute to the village’s first officer, Joseph A. Shelly, hangs over a conference table. Dozens more photos that line the walls of the precinct were obtained from the Phillips House Museum in the village.