Juvenile Services To Find New Home On Public Works Campus

OCEAN CITY — In what could be a win-win for all involved, it appears there could be a permanent home for a holding area for juvenile arrestees in Ocean City as part of a $25 million overhaul of the resort’s public works campus adjacent to the Public Safety Building and police headquarters.

The town’s Public Works Department has been working with the Maryland Transit Administration for a decade on a plan to substantially upgrade and expand Ocean City’s public works campus along the bay roughly from 64th to 67th streets. The public works complex, which includes administrative offices, bus and transit equipment storage and fueling, solid waste, maintenance and a myriad of other services, was last upgraded over three decades ago in 1983 and the department has outgrown the aging facilities.

To that end, the Public Works Department and the MTA are currently in the design phase of the major overhaul of the complex, which could come at around $25 million before all is said and done. The existing Department of Juvenile Services facility on the site will have to be displaced or removed altogether when the construction phase of the site gets underway, but Public Works Director Hal Adkins has been tweaking the redesign and appears to have found a viable solution for a home for the Department of Juvenile Services offices and holding area in the resort.

“The Department of Juvenile Services is currently housed in what can best be described as a double-wide trailer at the gravel lot of what we call the old waterslide property,” Adkins told the Police Commission on Wednesday. “By 2017, it will have to be removed because that area will be under construction. I’m just looking for a little guidance on what to do with it, but I have a plan.”

Ocean City Police Department (OCPD) Lieutenant Scott Harner explained the purpose and need for a Department of Juvenile Services facility in the resort. When the OCPD arrests a juvenile for a variety of reasons, there is a limited time during which the juvenile can be held in the holding cells in the Public Safety Building with the rest of the arrestees. Typically, a juvenile arrestee is turned over to the Department of Juvenile Services and ultimately a parent or guardian, but there can be a significant time period between the arrest and processing and a pick-up by a parent or guardian.

“Juvenile Services plays an instrumental part in the police department’s operations,” said Harner. “When we arrest a juvenile, we can’t keep them in a secure facility for more than six hours. Sometimes, a parent or guardian is coming from the other side of the bay, often several hours away. Sometimes there are multiple juvenile arrests in the same night and we have to have a holding area for them while they wait for their parents or guardians.”

Currently, that holding area is a double-wide trailer not far from the Public Safety Building, but that facility is going to go away when the major renovation of the public works campus gets underway. However, Adkins has found an area in one of the new buildings in the proposed plan not far from the Public Safety Building for the Department of Juvenile Services. The building would also be used for storage and include a substation of sorts for the Ocean City Beach Patrol.

“What I envision is stretching out the footprint of that storage building,” said Adkins. “It would have a storage area for the police department, a facility for Juvenile Services and another area for the Beach Patrol.”

Harner said having a Juvenile Services facility in close proximity to the police station would improve efficiency and make life easier for the department.

“We used to transport juveniles to a facility on Lark Lane, but that facility has gone away,” he said. “The temporary facility we have now works, but if this isn’t adopted, Juvenile Services might find a new home in West Ocean City, for example, and our officers would spend half their shift going back and forth and transporting juveniles.”

OCPD Captain Kevin Kirstein praised the proposed solution for the new home for Juvenile Services.

“This arrangement will allow us to literally walk them across the alley to Juvenile Services,” he said. “We used to have to load them into a transport and take them off of our property.”

The state’s Department of Juvenile Services currently pays the town of Ocean City around $980 per month in rent for the current trailer on the public works campus. Harner said the details have not been worked out, but said there is no reason to believe the state agency wouldn’t continue to pay the same rent or even more for a facility in the new storage building practically adjacent to the Public Safety Building just across the alley.

After considerable debate, the Police Commission voted to accept the recommendation and incorporate the Juvenile Services facility into the new storage building on the campus.

“I think this will work out really well for the police department in terms of how it is set up,” said Mayor Rick Meehan.

About The Author: Shawn Soper

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Shawn Soper has been with The Dispatch since 2000. He began as a staff writer covering various local government beats and general stories. His current positions include managing editor and sports editor. Growing up in Baltimore before moving to Ocean City full time three decades ago, Soper graduated from Loch Raven High School in 1981 and from Towson University in 1985 with degrees in mass communications with a journalism concentration and history.