Police move into new Hurst Justice Center

In recent years, it wasn’t unusual to see detectives and officers working at a small desk in a Police Department hallway or to have the municipal judge and prosecutor conduct court interviews in an employee kitchen.

The crowded conditions are now a thing of the past as the Hurst Police Department started moving in to its newly built justice center last week.

Police Chief Steve Moore said officers and other employees were in overcrowded conditions for years, which made doing their jobs more difficult and made the department’s operations less efficient.

“We outgrew our building and we had multiple people trying to use the same desk,” he said.

The Police Department is moving in to the building first, and the municipal court is scheduled to move March 13.

The 97,000-square-foot justice center, at 825 Thousand Oaks Drive, was funded in part with a $16.5 million bond package that voters approved in 2012 and about $2 million from capital reserves and the crime tax.

The four-story building has plenty of room for office space and additional room for the municipal court. A three-story parking garage is also part of the justice center.

The old Police Department will be renovated and will house a dispatch center, a crime scene lab and an expanded jail and sally port, Moore said.

The original Police Department was built in 1983 when Hurst’s population was 31,000. Now the city has about 37,000 people.

Moore said the justice center will serve the department for the next 30 years.

“We are really excited about the additional space. People will be spread out more,” Moore said.

This story was originally published March 3, 2015 at 6:00 AM with the headline "Police move into new Hurst Justice Center."