GPD opens its doors for annual event.

By Mary O’KEEFE

The public is invited to the Glendale Police Dept. open house on Saturday, Oct. 13 from 10:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the downtown station, 131 N. Isabel St. This is a free event.

“We invite the public to come and see where we work and what we do in an informal setting,” said GPD Chief Carl Povilaitis.

The department will be well represented with officers and detectives from air support, patrol and professional staff. There will also be representatives from the Forensic Unit.

“And I am sure we will have a K9 or two,” Povilaitis added. “One of our key strategic [goals] is community engagement. The [open house] lets the community get to know us on several fronts.”

There will be a rock climbing wall and station tours and the Glendale Police Foundation will be serving hotdogs.

The open house is an annual event and this year there will be one new addition visitors will find – the Glendale Police Museum. The project, which cost about $300,000, was funded by the GPF and donations from community members. There will be exhibits that trace the department’s history since 1906.

“The museum was a community-driven project,” Povilaitis said.

He added that GPD was one of the first agencies to have Mobile Data Terminals, mobile communications between police cars and the station. This is something that seems normal today but, in the past, it was groundbreaking.

“The museum gives visitors the opportunity to see where we have come from,” he said.

The groundbreaking ceremony was held in June, but the concept for the museum had been in discussions for years.

There was never an official historian for the department but officers over the years collected information, pictures and items from the past. All of that was passed down from officer to unofficial historian officer, arriving most recently at the desk of Sgt. Teal Metts.

“We had put everything in storage, archived and scanned all the photos until about four years ago when I started introducing the idea of a museum,” Metts said in a previous interview with CVW.

He pitched his idea to then-GPD Chief Robert Castro who offered an area in the front lobby of the GPD station at 131 N. Isabel St. for the museum. The area is about 11’x17’ located in the north area of the lobby.

There are really two parts of the museum; the enclosed area will offer tours at specific times. Just outside that area are display windows that will house several items.

In the previous interview with CVW, Metts said he had a couple of favorite artifacts.

“One is the very first badge [issued by the department], badge No. 1. It was just a stamped piece of tin you could bend in half but that’s my favorite,” he said.

Other favorites are the guns, one of which was issued to the first police woman in the 1940s.

“Back then, police women were not like they are today, they were more of a community service officer and they were called ‘police women’ until the 1970s,” he said.

The first female police officer with GPD was Pauline Copeland. Her revolver, which was dated as “prewar,” was donated to the museum last year.

Povilaitis added that Metts had told him recently that he didn’t have enough room to display everything.

“I told him that was great, we can rotate [items],” he said.

The official opening of the GPD Museum will be on Oct. 11.

  Mary Okeefe