[Scan-DC] MPD 1st District Station gets new Diggs

[Kenneth Fowler]

1st District Police Station Set to Open In Southwest

By Theola Labbé-DeBose
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, February 26, 2009; DZ03

The 1st District police station is getting new digs.

Next month, the station house will move to the former Anthony A. Bowen
Elementary School in the 100 block of M Street SW, Mayor Adrian M.
Fenty (D) announced this week.

The move will make way for a $220 million forensics laboratory at the
old location, in the 400 block of Fourth Street SW. The six-story
building, slated to open in 2011, will house a public health lab, the
Office of the Chief Medical Examiner and the city's first crime
laboratory. Currently, the FBI processes forensic evidence and the
Drug Enforcement Administration analyzes drugs on behalf of the city.

D.C. Police Chief Cathy L. Lanier told the D.C. Council last year that
the agency has been limited by not having a forensic laboratory. The
FBI conducts DNA tests only when D.C. police have a suspect, Lanier
told the council last February. "However if our department had our
own, fully functional crime lab," she said, "we would be able to
conduct many more cold-hit analyses, in which DNA recovered at a crime
scene is tested against the national repository."

Bill Vossberg, the District's crime lab director, said that the
completed project would be a "full-service crime lab that will be able
to produce what is needed for forensic science testing."

1st District Cmdr. David K. Kamperin said the move of the station
house should be completed by March 16. Service to residents will not
be interrupted during the transition, he said. Movers will begin
taking items to the new location in the next few weeks, escorted by
police when transporting sensitive materials such as weapons and cash,
Kamperin said.

The work to convert Bowen school into a police station was completed
in seven months, Fenty said. Assistant Police Chief Diane Groomes said
residents pushed to have the new station in the heart of the Southwest
neighborhood, as opposed to the current location along a commercial
corridor surrounded by federal buildings. The new building will have a
community room that is twice the size of the one in the current
station. The building is also the first new police facility in more
than a decade, Groomes said.

"I know the officers will be happy to get a new home," Groomes said.

D.C. police will also get new space to store evidence, Fenty said. The
police have outgrown their current leased quarters on the campus of
D.C. Village in Southeast, and the city plans to build a
30,000-square-foot facility. The city will finalize a contractor and
submit the contract to the D.C. Council for approval next month,
officials said.

-- 
Kenneth Fowler
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