By Greg Sowinski
The Lima News
LIMA — When Kevin Martin started working at the Lima Police Department, he was hired as a correctional officer in the agency’s jail.
The year was 1986, and he was just a few months removed from the U.S. Marine Corps. In the next five years, a lot would change. Martin would become a police officer, and the department’s jail would close.
“It closed down after the new county jail opened,” said Martin, who today heads the agency as the chief of police.
More than 20 years later, the jail remains a dilapidated structure inside the agency. Few in the general public are likely even aware it’s on the second floor, behind several locked doors.
The jail has been used as storage. Over the years, different uses for the jail have been considered — and it always go back to dismantling the cells and converting the 35-bed jail into some type of usable space.
The big problem, however, was money.
But recent changes in the law including requirements on the retention of evidence meant Lima Police had to find more storage space. The agency also has had a need to expand the bureau where evidence is processed, and the city had a need for a secure local computer storage backup center.
Again, the old LPD jail came up in conversation.
This time, with the new evidence storage law, something had to be done. From the idea, a $1.8 million plan was born.
Dismantling a jail is no easy task, however. Martin and others at the agency surmise construction workers will have to bring in plasma cutters to remove the old bars that are fastened into the cement floor and ceiling. The bars will be auctioned to raise money, Martin said.
There’s plumbing going to every cell to remove, electronics to dismantle and heating pipes to take out.
The plan is to build a 3,300-square foot evidence storage room, a 19-foot by 34-foot evidence lab and a 19-foot by 40-foot computer backup storage room. The hope is to have it done by June 2014.
This week, Martin and a few other officers walked through the old jail, first entering through an old steel door past the former visitation room that has a sheet of plywood covering what once was a glass window.
There are three cell blocks with 9-foot by 9-foot square foot cells that had two beds, if you can call a sheet of metal hanging from the wall a bed. Inmates slept on a thin mattress and were issued two sheets and an old military-style wool blanket.
A toilet with a sink on top was in each cell. The day room, a small walkway in front of the cells with a bench for meals, sits in front. Off to the side are two showers and a spare toilet with no walls. Privacy doesn’t exist in jail.
Each cell block had a television. None of the blocks had windows to the outside although there were windows inmates walked by on the way outside each day.
The cell blocks are crude in appearance and many of the cells are missing beds. Some cells have old police equipment stored inside. The doors to the cells, once controlled by electronic motors, are left open. Several motors — archaic looking by today’s standards — have missing covers with wires hanging out, perhaps a repair effort that never was finished.
The jail is painted pink, which Martin explains happened after former jail officer Ted Boop heard the color calmed inmates.
While the jail’s better days are years in the past, Martin said it never was a place anyone would enjoy his time. For most, was a tough place people couldn’t wait to leave.
When the jail opened with the new police building in 1969, Martin said an officer would occasionally walk upstairs at the police department and check on the inmates.
Back then the two-man cells were four-man cells until federal laws placed requirements on how many inmates could be held in a certain size area.
In 1986, laws changed again and Lima had to hire correctional officers, which included Martin, to watch the inmates around the clock. Several others in that class remain, Martin said. Tim Clark is one of the most senior detectives today, Dave Vastano is the Safety City officer and Paul Guidera is a patrol officer.
One of the three cell blocks held misdemeanor convicts, Martin said.
“A person could be kept here for up to one year,” Martin said. “A year would be a long time.”
Another block held misdemeanor defendants waiting trial and the third held felony defendants before their case was sent to the grand jury, which meant they would be transferred to the old county jail, Martin said.
“The felons or suspected felons that would be in there, they were suspected of murders, rapes, burglaries, robberies, any felony crime,” Martin said.
There was no kitchen at the jail. Meals were brought in from Anthony Brothers, a restaurant that was near the Town Square. Meals were bland, at best, Martin said. He said there was a requirement that a correctional officer had to eat the same meal served to inmates.
Inmates were allowed recreational time each day in a small yard outside the department just to the west. The yard, despite its fenced-in walls topped with razor wire, is now home to the bike storage yard.
The jail also had its own segregation unit with six cells for inmates who had to be kept out of general population.
The jail never housed women. They were taken to facilities outside Allen County, preferably close by but not always.
While Martin only spent six months working the jail, he said it was a great learning experience for being a police officer. Not only did he learned all the tricks criminals try to play but he also got to know many criminals, who, unfortunately, many were repeat customers in the years that followed.
“I got to know a lot of people I would meet on the streets,” he said.