Campbell police open state-of-the-art headquarters

After almost 55 years, the Campbell Police Department will no longer be located below ground.

The new 27,500-square-foot police headquarters at 100 N. First St. is nearly four times larger than its former 7,000-square-foot home that served as the city’s police department for decades. The facility opened July 10 and has been long planned following Measure O, a $50 million general bond measure passed in November 2018 to fund a new police operations center and library. Campbell’s Civic Center Master Plan identified the police department and library as the city’s highest priorities for upgrades.

“We have a dedicated space for our Real-Time Intelligence Center, bringing together our camera systems and our Drones as First Responder (DFR) program into a single operational location,” Campbell Police Chief Gary Berg told San José Spotlight.

The 21st century headquarters is adjacent to its previous site at City Hall and has floor to ceiling windows that frame the front of the two-story building. The first floor is home to the records, traffic and field services divisions, a gym and suspect processing facility with two holding cells. The second floor includes a dispatch center, detective’s bureau, administrative offices, intelligence center and wellness room. The meeting and training room will double as the city’s emergency operations center during natural disasters.

The dispatch center can stream live drone videos to patrol operations, providing officers with essential knowledge and decision-making abilities before arriving on the scene, Berg said.

Campbell Vice Mayor Anne Bybee said she is proud of the city’s new state-of-the-art police facility.

“This modern facility is designed to enhance public safety and support our public safety employees as they protect and serve our community every day,” she told San José Spotlight. “This project would not have been possible without the support of Campbell voters who approved the Measure O bond.”

The police department worked with Campbell’s historical museum to create a display on the first floor depicting the department through the decades with photographs from the 1960s, uniforms from 1956-69, a fingerprinting kit from 1993, badges used from 1952-65 and even a radio phone from 1958.

While the new headquarters has been unveiled, there is still work to be done. The second phase of the project will renovate the previous City Hall location for non-essential operations such as evidence processing and storage. A conference room will be added, which will be shared with City Hall. The renovation is slated for completion by summer 2027.

“They finally have a building that will match the needs of the department,” Councilmember Sergio Lopez told San José Spotlight. “We always knew that was an inadequate situation, so it’s been a major priority. It is something that has been deeply needed and supported by the community for a long time.”

In the past, patrol and traffic officers worked out of a double wide trailer, which included a suspect processing area, without running water or bathrooms, Berg said. And the intelligence center was in an office on the other side of City Hall.

Now instead of the dispatch team operating in a windowless office, they are sharing photos of sunrises and sunsets from the new operations center.

“It’s creating a different environment and much more positive space for them to work in,” Berg said.

Campbell Mayor Dan Furtado said the city wanted to expand the department’s space for some time, but due to seismic requirements couldn’t add on to the existing building. The city also lacked funding to construct a new one before Measure O, which city voters approved by 69.5%.

“We are very excited about the new building,” Furtado told San José Spotlight. “The total number of employees at the police department is right around 80, so it was getting pretty crowded in the facilities that we had. It creates a safer environment and helps the police officers in their daily work as well.”

The majority of funding for the new police headquarters — $30 million — comes from Measure O. In addition, $3.9 million came from the California Governor’s Office Emergency Services, $939,000 from American Rescue Plan Act and $512,000 from the city’s General Fund, according to Campbell Public Works Director Amy Olay.

“Measure O signified the relationship and the trust that we’ve built with our community,” Berg said. “For the community to support such a project that allows us the ability to move out of an antiquated space and into a space that truly reflects the need and the technology is a great feeling.”

Berg said the new building brings officers a sense of pride and makes a difficult job a little easier.

“We’ve been at the forefront of innovation in public safety over the last five or six years … and our old space really didn’t reflect that,” he told San José Spotlight. “It works as a great recruitment tool for the next generation of police officers seeing the space that we’re working out of.”

Contact Lorraine Gabbert at [email protected].