The Real Cost of Prisons Weblog

Sheriff James V. DiPaola is touting his plan to build a new prison in East Somerville as a way to also provide a new headquarters for city police. But the police DiPaola said he wants to help strongly oppose the idea.

³We don¹t want anything to do with DiPaola. We do not want him to use us as an excuse to build his own police department and further his own goals,² Patrolmen¹s Union President Jack Leutcher said this week. ³Our feeling is DiPaola wants to establish his force as a police department. If he¹s going after money to build a new facility, why can¹t we? Who has more of a need? I think we do. Does the city have to sell its soul to Mr. DiPaola to get a new police station? I don¹t think so.²

In August, nearly 60 people who work at the police station sought legal action as an attempt to get to the bottom of alleged health problems plaguing employees of the building. The suit claims they ³were subjected to pro-longed exposures, to chronic damp conditions, and the types of molds that produce toxins as well as other hazardous substances present in their workplace environment.² The Patrolmen¹s Union has publicly supported the plaintiffs and helped pay for testing on the building.

The case has yet to be resolved.

DiPaola said he needs a new facility to house prisoners because of overcrowding conditions in the East Cambridge jail. The jail houses 370 inmates, but was designed for 160, he said. The Billerica House of Correction, which is undergoing renovations, was built in 1929 to house 300 inmates, but houses as many as 1,250, he said.

The Middlesex County jail occupies floors 17 through 22 of the Middlesex County Courthouse in East Cambridge, which is targeted for closing by the end of 2007 to undergo asbestos removal and a $125 million rehabilitation.

DiPaola said he is facing the same conditions in the Middlesex County Courthouse that police in Somerville face in their own building.

³I¹m surprised they¹re against this,² DiPaola said. ³I¹m bringing something to the table that would solve their problem. What motivated me to bring this project to Somerville was their interest in a new police station. I¹d like to sit down and discuss this with the union because I see myself as being on their side.²

As for the union¹s assertion that DiPaola is using the city to extend his empire and build his own power as sheriff, DiPaola said that is simply not the case.

³Sometimes when you have different departments working in the same building, there is a fear that one side will lose its identity,² he said. ³But that is not going to happen here. I haven¹t taken over a police department yet and I don¹t have any plans to.²

Mayor Joseph A. Curtatone¹s spokesperson Thomas P. Champion said the mayor is interested in working with DiPaola to build a facility in the city that would serve as both a jail for inmates awaiting trial and a new station for the Police Department.

³This is potentially a way to get a new police station at a time when everyone agrees we need one,² Champion said.

For Leutcher, the need for a new station is not enough to share space with DiPaola and the Middlesex County Sheriff¹s Department.

³There are a lot of politics being played here and they¹re going to use the excuse of a new police station and that they¹re doing this for us, but we¹re not buying it,² he said.

http://somervillenews.typepad.com/the_somerville_news/2006/06/sheriff_wants_
a.html