Sights Unseen: The Auburn Police Department

In 2011, the Auburn Police Department moved from One Minot Avenue into the newly remodeled Auburn Hall. The new space is located on the ground and third floors.

The patrol officers, court officers and watch commander are on the ground floor where the public can come in and pay fines, look up records and access reports.

To access the third floor, where administration, criminal investigations and detectives are located, a special key card is needed. The only time a member of the public would be on the third floor is if they have an appointment with a detective.

“It’s been a bit of a challenge to be split up this way,” said Deputy Chief of Police Jason Moen. “But we’ve made it work.”

: Deputy Police Chief Jason Moen keeps the badges he has worn over the years on a shelf, along with Challenge Coins from other police departments, in his third-floor office. “If we have a citizen that helps out with a crime and goes above and beyond, we will give them a Challenge Coin,” said Moen. “Each officer is issued two coins and will hand one out as a kind of ‘thank you.’ The chief will then follow it up with a letter of appreciation.”

: The locked armory on the ground floor of Auburn Hall has weapons for the honor guard, ammunition for service weapons and other weapons.

: “It’s used daily, usually each morning and after each shift,” said Jason Moen, deputy chief, about the exercise room in the police department.

: Crime scene photos from an unknown era decorate the hallway of the Auburn Police Department’s Criminal Investigations Unit on the third floor of Auburn Hall.

: One of the original motorcycles used by the Auburn Police Department is on display in a third-floor conference room of Auburn Hall. “We slowly want to turn this into a kind of museum,” said Deputy Chief Jason Moen, who thought the motorcycle was possibly from the 1980s.

: A wall on the third floor is dedicated to the only two Auburn police officers killed in the line of duty: Rodney Bonney, left, and Norman Philbrick.

: An Auburn police officer’s mother saved copies of The Lewiston Daily Sun that ran articles on a crash that killed Auburn officer Norman Philbrick and Lewiston firefighter Marcien Vallee in 1949. Deputy Chief Jason Moen keeps the newspapers in his third-floor office.

: “The views are pretty spectacular in our third-floor conference rooms,” said Deputy Chief Jason Moen. “I have to sit on the other side of the room or I get distracted by watching traffic.”

: A room on the third floor is used for pre-employment polygraphs administered by a private vendor. “In exchange for letting him use the space, he does all of our polygraphs for free, and it works out really well,” said Deputy Chief Jason Moen. “Rather than having to send someone to the training and to buy all of the equipment, it saves the department a lot of money.”

: This is the view from the other side of the police department’s information counter, located on the ground floor of Auburn Hall. Behind the counter are the materials needed to handle payments of fines, parking tickets and records retrieval.