Canberra’s ageing City Police Station (built in 1966) and encroaching light rail works pose a real threat to victims and witnesses attending court and to city police officers.

The 53-year-old building – the oldest building in the ACT Government portfolio – has lost all parking spaces behind the station (Knowles Place) forcing victims and witnesses to be “paraded” at the front because there is no longer a “subtle” rear access.

On-duty police cars are forced to park on London Circuit where they are public targets for vandalism, with one of the cars having a brick thrown through a window and another parked police car being side-swiped, narrowly missing a police officer.

Detective Inspector Stephen Ladd says there are more than 210 personnel working in the 53-year-old station (including 88 police officers) and six intelligence officers have to “hot-desk” due to a lack of space.

“Because we lost our parking spaces, when we bring witnesses and victims into the station now, we’re parading them out the front of the station as opposed to bringing them in subtly at the back door,” Inspector Ladd said.

“Once the light rail construction begins on this section of London Circuit, their proposal is to move all of our police parking in front of the courts, which is even worse in terms of the subtleties of bringing in victims and witnesses. We have protests in front of the courts regularly and you also have people we’ve had dealings with coming in and out of the court. It’s very problematic.”

The two-way section of road on Knowles Place is also a hazard when police trucks await access to the rear watchhouse entrance. There is often a line-up of vehicles, dangerously jutting out onto the road.

The city’s only watchhouse with 40-plus cells is also outdated, with two mass holding cells no longer in use as they are non-compliant with current standards. One of two padded cells is damaged and unable to be repaired. The entire station has ceiling leaks during heavy storms.

Acting Superintendent John Hawkins says the watchhouse is almost 30 years old and was never intended to be a watchhouse – it was originally a car park that was retro-fitted in 1994.

“It was never built for the purpose of a watchhouse and now most of these products are no longer available so a lot of these things we’re looking at require bespoke retrofits or major works to complete the change in the configuration of facilities,” he said.

“The padded toilet seat was damaged and we don’t have a permanent fix because getting a replacement toilet seat isn’t easy so we can’t use it anymore. We have one other padded cell left, and we can only look after one person who’s in this excited state or likely to self-harm.”

Many of the other surfaces in the watchhouse are hard, which pose a potential risk.

While Inspector Ladd welcomes the ACT Government’s $127 million funding to bolster ACT Policing, he said “we just don’t have the space to accommodate them”.

“The City/Braddon population is forecast at 20,000 to 30,000 people in the next 10 years,” he said. “We can’t service the community at that rate with the facilities that we have. The expansion we would need to service that, we just don’t have and there’s no real way to retrofit the current station.”

The ACT Court precinct and its façade are heritage listed. The ACT Government recently committed to a feasibility study to assess the potential requirements for future police station facilities in the Woden and City districts, as well as for the ACT Policing headquarters.

A statement reads: “This comprehensive evaluation will ensure that our police force operates from modern and fit-for-purpose facilities”.

Inspector Ladd said City Police Station has the busiest station in the ACT for “walk-ins”.

“It has to be somewhere that provides ready access for the public. The court precinct is appropriate for us, we have the vast majority of bail reporting. One of the perks of being here is we can walk people to the courts just across the road, which is something we’d lose if we were to relocate.”

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