The Rutgers University Police Department's new facilities in New Brunswick are finally worthy of its stature.

Larger than many municipal police departments in New Jersey with a cadre of 58 sworn police officers, the RUPD presents a professional front to the public. But its old home presented, well, a less polished image.

“We have always had a very good police department,” said Chief Rhonda Harris. “It was hard to get past the image of the building.”

The old white house at 5 Huntington St. on the College Avenue Campus is now vacant, with the police department moving into the new Public Safety Building at the corner of George and Commercial streets in downtown New Brunswick.  The department shares the building with Emergency Services, Transportation Services, Continuous Education and Outreach, Summer/Winter Session, and the Rutgers Center for State Health Policy.

“The new location has given us an opportunity to actively invite the community into the building and give people a chance to see the new technology we’re working with,” Harris said. “We are getting a ton of positive feedback. People are happy to have us in the neighborhood.”

The changes start from the outside: The Huntington Street house was old, pest infested, and prone to flooding. The new building has blast walls, bullet-resistant doors and windows, and steel ceilings to prevent escape attempts.

The new, 24-hour communications center has two dispatchers on duty at all times, and they monitor the more than 700 closed-captioned, motion-activated cameras that keep watch on campus alleyways, parking lots, stairwells, and public areas of residence halls. “We’ve been installing the cameras for several years, but we didn’t have the capacity to run the feeds back to the old building,” Harris said. Three large-screen televisions are continually monitoring the cameras and one is tuned to a news or weather channels.

The communications center also detects when firebox pull stations have been activated, and cameras record pranksters who like to cause disturbances when there is no emergency. “I’m positive we’re going to have an increase in apprehensions,” Harris said.

The computer-aided dispatch system records a history of calls, so when someone dials 911, a record immediately pops up showing the caller's previous calls and interactions with the police department. The system is integrated with those from police departments in surrounding towns and can locate emergency calls from cell phones using global positioning technology, said Sgt. Richard Dinan.

The electrical outlets at the Huntington Street building were old and some didn’t work. The house was susceptible to power loss, and a backup generator took a long time to get up and running.

Even worse, the single holding cell in the old house was a small converted room in the basement that would flood easily. Prisoners were handcuffed to an old bicycle rack, and had to be moved around the house to have fingerprints taken and to fill out forms. Detectives conducting interviews with victims had little privacy, as officers’ desks were crammed against each other.

The new building is a state-approved prison facility, which means the state Department of Corrections will conduct annual inspections. The holding area in the building’s basement has two separate cell spaces, including one overnight accommodation, computers, a Breathalyzer machine, and a fingerprint database are all in close proximity. “This is going to help us process people faster,” Harris said, adding that the new facilities are safer for prisoners, officers, and visitors.

The physical updates complement “virtual” updates – to the department’s web site. Soon, web visitors will be able to dial 911, request personal property registration, and file police reports from their computers.

“We’re stepping up in terms of technology,” Harris said. “In some ways, I’m the envy of police chiefs around the state. We’ve leapt way out in front of most police departments.”