New Station OKd for Deputies : Camarillo: The city will spend $4 million on the project. Officers can’t wait to leave their cramped quarters.

To the relief of its police officers, the Camarillo City Council has approved spending $4 million to purchase and renovate the Bill Esty Community Center for use as a new police station.

Strapped for cash, the city must finance the project mainly through loans. But council members point out that converting the community center will be less expensive than constructing a new building.

Moreover, city officials said, the new station is needed to boost the morale of the Ventura County sheriff’s deputies who are under contract to provide police protection for the city.

“They are the Camarillo Police Department and we need to treat them like we have pride in them,” Mayor Charlotte Craven said.

City officials plan to begin renovation in September, with completion scheduled for March, 1994.

But deputies said Thursday that they are already anticipating the move to the new quarters at 3701 E. Las Posas Road.

“Everybody’s going to be glad to get out of here,” Sgt. Keith Lazz said.

Dank, dark and cramped, the Camarillo police station is located in a one-story windowless building on Palm Drive.

“It’s a dump,” said Maureen Sorensen, the station’s office manager. “The roof leaks. The carpet is all torn up. There’s too many people here.”

The 5,000-square-foot building is occupied by 40 deputies who serve Camarillo, another 10 officers who patrol surrounding rural communities and six support staff members.

The hallways are lined with desks. Ceilings are dotted with holes where rain has leaked during recent rains. The men’s bathroom has only one urinal.

Cmdr. Ray Abbott, who heads the station, said the inconveniences of working in such cramped conditions slowly erode morale.

“It’s the little things,” he said. “It’s the cumulative effect.”

He cites the men’s locker room as an example of irritating working conditions. “You go to change clothes and you got to wait till the other guy is done because there’s not enough room,” Abbott said.

Besides larger locker rooms, the new station will have amenities lacking at the Palm Drive station, such as an exercise room and showers.

Lazz said the officers need showers for incidents such as occurred a few weeks ago, when two deputies were splattered with blood while trying to break up a domestic dispute. The officers had to go home to clean up and change.

“It’s very sticky, very irritating,” Lazz said. He said his deputies need a station where they can shower, put on new uniforms and return to work quickly.

Deputies said the new station will not only be more convenient and pleasant to work in, it will be safer--for them and the public.

Before becoming a police station in 1976, the Palm Drive building served as a school and then as City Hall. It has never been upgraded to have sophisticated door locks and other security measures that are routinely built into modern police stations, deputies said.

Suspects have escaped in the past by simply running out the building’s back door, Deputy Jeff Nettleton said.

But the lack of security is most apparent in the building’s ungated parking lot, which invites vindictive acts from residents with grudges against police.

“We’ve had tires slashed,” Sorensen said, adding that automobiles have also been spray-painted. “It’s personal vehicles as well as department vehicles.”

Deputies won’t take any chances with their cars at the new police station. In addition to being surrounded by high walls and gates, the parking lot may also be monitored with closed-circuit TV, Abbott said.