HUNTINGTON BEACH : Officials Unveil Mobile Police Station

Police officials last week unveiled a $100,000 mobile police substation and command post that can be taken to trouble spots at a moment’s notice.

The 40-foot, 12,000-pound custom-designed police station on wheels has a jail holding area where eight prisoners can be handcuffed to a rail. It has a gun rack for SWAT sharpshooters and a trap door through which officers can make their escape if under siege or the unit overturns. There is a television set and a VCR, as well as computers, so that police can set up a mobile command post.

The mobile unit is expected to be used this week in the Florida Street-Utica Avenue area west of Beach Boulevard, a neighborhood that has come in for much police attention because of drug sales and other complaints, Police Chief Ronald E. Lowenberg said.

Saying he was an early advocate of the mobile station, Councilman Jim Silva predicted that offenders will flee a crime-plagued area once they see the mobile unit in the neighborhood.

Councilwoman Linda Moulton-Patterson said the mobile station will help police fight crime “because it can move as crime moves. This is a safe city, and we want to keep it that way.”

The city used $36,000 in assets seized from drug dealers to pay for the center, and the balance came from corporations that donated material and work.

There’s a front desk area for two detectives to meet the public and a stage area in the rear where officers can conduct community meetings and hand out anti-drug comments and similar messages.

Lowenberg calls the 40-foot-long unit with a bullet-resistant exterior “a rolling Taj Mahal” and said he believes it is the first of its kind in the county.

Competition Trailer Inc. designed the unit. The DuPont Co. donated Kevlar, a material that is used in bulletproof vests, for the trailer’s walls. National Aeronautics and Space Administration scientists worked on the process to put the material into the lining of the trailer walls, which, though not impervious, would stop most bullets, Officer Michael H. Corcoran said.