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Joe Hornaday
Westport Police Get New Department
The officers of the Westport Police Department have been performing their law enforcement duties for years enduring a cramped and small station.
But that all changed on Friday, when Westport Police Chief Todd Hampton and his crew officially opened the doors to their new station, a bigger building with significantly more space and room to work.
The Westport PD is now located in the structure that was once home to the community fire department. The Friday open house invited citizens, members of the law enforcement community and others to come in for their first look into the new establishment while celebrating with food and camaraderie.
Both Hampton and town council president Brian Gatewood remarked how the new building had been a long time in the making.
“What started as a dream is reality,” Hampton said to the crowd.
Ten by 12 foot of office space at the old station was not going to cut it, and Decatur County REMC helped get the project started, he noted.
According to Don Schilling of the REMC, the grant comes from a community trust that is collected when people paying their electric bills round their payment up to the nearest dollar. The trust board then chooses a worthy project to receive the money. This time, it went to the Westport Police. Hampton was especially thankful for the REMC’s help.
Also responsible for helping the WPD move to the new location was the Westport Fire Department, the Westport Town Council, the Westport Clerk’s office, Steve Hampton, Gatewood Construction, Carl Haas Construction, Hardebeck Construction, the Lowe’s shop in Columbus, local store It’s New to You, Baltus Electronics, Hampton Auto Parts and DW Auto Sales.
The Westport area’s drug problem has had Hampton concerned for a long time, and noted that the growing rate of criminal activity further necessitated the need for a new department building.
“We’re certainly getting our fair share down here,” he said of the county’s crime.
Gatewood noted that he had been working with Hampton on the project for years, and commented that it had always been a privilege to work with the WPD.
“They’re a department with a lot of heart,” Gatewood said. “We’re a small town, but we’ve got something nice and decent now.”
Rev. Mike Bartlett, who provided the prayer at the ceremony, explained that when he had arrived in Westport about 10 years ago, he began talking to residents who expressed concern that the town was no longer what it once was. The community members, Bartlett said, were becoming increasingly afraid of the drugs and vandalism that plagued the area.
“It’s important to bond together to make Westport the city it once was,” he added.
The new police station is not quite finished yet, but when it is, there will be several new offices and an evidence room, luxuries that were not available at the old building.
“We’re about halfway there,” WPD officer Rob Goodfellow said.
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