By Corrina Taylor
Staff Writer

Inside the jail facility there is a check in area guarded by a policeman and steel bars to keep the inmates contained. In the patrol room are monitors that show video surveillance of the whole facility, including the various inmates. Some lay on their beds asleep while others pace furiously.

This jail facility described is not the jail in Coppell, but the recently renovated jail of Carrollton.

Currently, both the Coppell Police Department and Carrollton Police Department have been collaborating on consolidating their jail facilities because of the trivial jail facility currently residing in Coppell.

“We have a jail, but we don’t have a full time staff for the jails, so we don’t have jailers – our jail is monitored by our dispatchers and then our officers come in and do jail checks,” CHS resource officer Rachael Freeman said. “So [consolidation] will help our patrol officers that come in and do jail checks. It will relieve them of those normal duties, so it will put them back on the streets instead of tying them up in the jail.”

Coppell Police Department looked into making improvements to the detention facility by remodeling the current jail and hiring staff that would be able to watch over the inmates at all times. The final cost of hiring a full time staff of detention officers would have totaled at $300,000 per year. So instead the department set out to look in alternative options.

In a press release, Coppell Chief of Police Mac Tristan stated, “Our current jail is not the optimal use of resources.  Patrol officers spend an inordinate amount of time in the jail, processing prisoners including intake and release.  This time can be better spent on patrol answering calls for service and patrolling our community. This consolidation will allow Police Department employees to focus on their primary duties while ensuring arrested persons are safely housed.”

Due to the size of the facility, as well as the lacking manpower to take care of the inmates, Coppell has correlated with Carrollton along with other counties such as Addison and Farmers Branch to combine jails.

The jails aren’t the only thing that has been combined throughout the different counties. Since 2009 there has been a partnership between the different cities in order to consolidate the separate resources. Currently there is one combined SWAT team that answers for Coppell, Carrollton, Addison and Farmers Branch.

In May, Carrollton conducted a jail consolidation study to find the price of taking on inmates from other counties and how much they should charge per prisoner. The study came out to say that in order for Coppell to harbor its prisoners in Carrollton they would have to pay a fee of $100 for the first 48 hours and $100 each additional day after the initial 48 hours.

Once this agreement was reached both departments set out to work on what was necessary in order to share the jail facility.

“We have to get our court system in place, obviously when prisoners come in there is a lot of record keeping and there is separate keeping for Coppell,” PR representative John Stovall of Carrollton Police Department said. “Their [Coppell’s] municipal court judges have been over here to talk to our judges and our staff, they worked through fines and collection that’s going to be separated from Carrollton there are rest reports and documentation for everyone arrested so their [Coppell’s] system will have to be in place here and that’s all been worked out.”

The jail merging began Oct. 1. Since Coppell only arrests approximately 1,000 per year there is plenty of space in Carrollton’s jail facility. The partnership between Carrollton and Coppell has proven to be beneficial for both parties.

“In some areas of public safety services consolidation could mean a reduction in the level of services to our residents, those will never be considered.  However, this jail consolidation will allow us to increase the level of services provided, reduce liability, and more effectively use tax payer dollars,” Tristan said in the release.

It has been less than a week since the merging occurred, so there are sure to be some kinks down the road including complications with paperwork and miscommunication, but both counties are confident that this change is for the best. For Coppell, they hope to have a more impactful presence in the community since officers will no longer have the jails to detain them from their patrols, they hope to become more helpful in the community through more traffic regulations, and better all around services.

Since there is no longer a need for a jail in Coppell the Coppell Police Department is looking to the future on future renovations and adjustments to the department.

“With the jail no longer in business we are looking at what other changes could be made; obviously we are exploring the space that used to be our jail and how to utilize that space,” Administrative Sargent David Moore of Coppell Police said. “I imagine it will take some time to come up with plans and get funding, a lot of ideas have been thrown around but it has to go up the chain of command and we need to weigh the options of what we are going to get out of it versus all that is involved in the renovation of a city building.”

With this new consolidation in order there are high hopes that Coppell will remain a family friendly and safe environment thanks to the officers in Coppell. Whatever future renovations that will be made will be done so with the citizens’ best interest at heart, because that is what it comes down to for the police department: making sure the city’s people are safe and they are doing everything in their capability to ensure the best choices are being made for their city and its people.